A Dark Reckoning
by whiskeyneat
Summary: Voldemort!Wins. Ginny finds herself caught in a Muggle conflict, saving the life of Thorfinn Rowle, the two of them bound together by fate. After Ginny's capture, she is forced to wed him in a ritual of old magick. But Ginny escapes-and Thorfinn knows he will have to move heaven and earth to find her-before the killer in the ranks of the Dumbledore's ragtag Army gets to her first.
1. Prologue-Apostasy

**A/N: Fic is rated M. This is your only warning about dark topics.**

 **Disclaimer:** Last I checked, Harry Potter still belonged to JKR.

 **Summary:** Voldemort has won, and what was once Dumbledore's Army has scattered to the winds.

On the run from the past, a troubled Ginny Weasley finds herself in Ireland, caught between a Muggle conflict and fulfilling a life debt to Thorfinn Rowle, the one man she thought she'd never see again. Splintered from the DA and alone in the world, Ginny sets off on a suicide mission to avenge the deaths of her loved ones, against all advice. Instead, she finds herself captured by the Dark Lord, and sentenced to death. At the last hour, she agrees to a marriage of convenience for her own protection - a marriage to Thorfinn Rowle, bound by the old gods in a ritual of deepest magic - and then she runs... and Thorfinn knows he will have to move heaven and earth to find her - before the killer in the ranks of the DA gets to her first.

Main pairing is Thorfinn x Ginny, though there is also a Seamus x Ginny pairing as well. The fic is set fifteen months after the Battle of Hogwarts. In this fic, Thorfinn is 8 years older than Ginny, and was in the same year as Charlie Weasley at Hogwarts.

The inspiration for Thorfinn's nickname of "Viking" was borrowed with permission from Freya Ishtar. If you haven't read her amazing fics, you're missing out!

I don't have a beta, all mistakes are entirely my own, but I did want to give a shoutout to StopTalkingAtMe, who gave me an excellent concrit. This chapter & Ch1 have now been edited to reflect that.

 **XxX**

 **A Dark Reckoning**

 _Go and catch a falling star,  
Get with child a mandrake root,  
Tell me where all past years are,  
Or who cleft the devil's foot,  
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,  
Or to keep off envy's stinging,  
And find  
What wind  
Serves to advance an honest mind. - John Donne, "Song"._

 _The best of men cannot suspend their fate; the good die early and the bad die late. – Daniel Defoe._

 **Prologue | Apostasy**

August 1999

When Susan Bones Apparates to the appointed meeting place, she at first thinks she's made a mistake. She is standing in a skeletal forest, the mist rolling in thick and white from the sea. In the distance, she can hear a faint ringing, and the harsh shrieks of gulls on the wing. It is too far for the tang of the sea here, but a distinctly metallic scent hangs cold and heavy in the air.

The thick carpet of ferns, nearly to her waist, are sodden with dew, and she finds herself pulling her cloak closer together as she navigates the treacherous forest floor, every misstep a possible plummet to her death.

She's going to bloody well kill him, she really is.

"Where are you?!" Susan yells, and her voice echoes in the forest. _You... You... You..._

Something stirs behind her, and she turns. A yellow-eyed crow is sitting on a low-hanging branch of the yew tree, and as she lifts her head, it opens its beak and lets out a loud _Caw! Caw!_ before flying straight at her. Instinctively, Susan ducks, and the crow swoops over her head. All the hair rises on the back of her neck, and she draws her wand back out, gripping it fearfully. The forest around her _breathes_.

She is suddenly overcome by the intense urge to flee.

That is when she realizes that the trees are full of silent crows, sitting and watching her. She feels a wet droplet hit her head, then another. The metallic smell is stronger than before, and there is another smell now as well, a rank, overpowering scent, at once both sweet and sickening. When she draws her hood back over her head, the droplets splash onto her hands from above, fingers coming away sticky and black.

" _Fuck_." Susan looks up, and then she begins to scream.

The wood fills with the sound of crows, and they rise, circling above the canopy, their cries eerie and piercing in the muted light.

They plunge all at once, in a great dark whirling funnel of feathers and sharp beaks, and then there is only silence.

All but for a single word, carried on the wind...

( _Esus_.)


	2. Allegiance

**One | Allegiance**

"Open the damn door!" The pounding ricochets through her skull like a sniper's bullet, a whiskey headache all the way from Belfast with love. Ginny rolls over the side of the bed, grabbing Seamus' .44 Magnum from the bedside table. He's taken the only wand they have between them, and she still isn't entirely comfortable with the thick metal in her hands, remembering belatedly to chamber the bullets with a loud _click_.

"Open this bloody door or I'll break it down!" The pounding resumes, and Ginny vaults over the mattress, a lumpy futon pad she and Seamus 'liberated' from an alley after their arrival back from Bosnia some three months previous. At the time, they'd been living rough, and even a lumpy mattress that reeked of cat piss and mildew was a luxury. They'd joked that nothing would truly make it clean, short of burning it.

Ginny has a feeling she's about to find out just how prophetic those words are.

With her back flat against the wall, she holds the gun in one hand, trying to catch her breath as she checks her leg sheath to make sure her blades are still there. She's only been living like a Muggle for a little over a year, but she's already learned to kill like one. She'll be damned if any Death Eater is going to get the jump on her unprepared.

 _Like Harry..._

The door crashes open, nearly coming off its hinges, and a stream of green light slams into the center of the mattress where she lay only seconds ago.

Ginny pivots on her heel and extends her arm, pulling the trigger in one smooth motion. The force of the shot nearly dislocates her wrist, and when she steadies herself, she looks down to see the prone figure of Titus Avery lying flat on his back in the hallway, a perfect hole smoking in the side of his head. There is a ringing in her ears.

The old killer wears an expression of faint surprise, under all the blood and gore. The splatter is all over the hallway, and Ginny abruptly falls on her knees and vomits in the corridor. Muggle killing is always so _nasty_. She's never gotten used to it, not even after all this time.

"If you hadn't shot him, he'd have done for you, Red." Alec Donnelly is out of breath, like he's run up two flights of stairs, and he probably has. Alec is Seamus' best mate from his Muggle childhood, a tall boy with a thick Belfast accent and a shock of dark hair that reminds Ginny of another friend, another life. "Christ Almighty!" He looks down at Avery, registering the gunshot wound, and has to look away, blanching. "Who's the geezer?"

"That was a dark wizard named Titus Avery. He was here to kill us," Ginny says flatly. She needs Seamus' arms around her. Things aren't right with the world when he's gone. She feels naked and adrift without his presence to steady her, and she doesn't like it. It's been fifteen months on the run, of falling apart and holding together, ever since they lost the Battle. Ever since Harry and her family died, and their world went to hell.

"Where's Seamus, Red?" Alec spits on Avery's body. A silvery wisp is rising from the corpse, but being a Muggle, Alec can't see it, and Ginny doesn't want to deal with it alone. She wonders where Avery's partner is. Usually these bastards work in pairs. She grabs Alec and pulls him into the room, slamming the door behind her. "I don't know where he is." The impact of it hits her all at once, and her legs fail her. She sits on the bed with her head between her knees.

They are going to have to run. But there is nowhere to go. She lifts her head, meeting Alec's grave expression with a wretched look.

Ginny realizes that she is shaking. It's all over. She is going to start wailing any minute. She needs Seamus here, to fight her or fuck her, to slap her and jolt her out of it. If he doesn't come back soon, she doesn't know what she'll do.

She should call a meeting of the DA. The impossibility of the task before her hits her like a rogue Bludger. Hermione and Neville are in Paris, Ernie, Susan and Cho in Orkney, and the rest so far flung across the globe that international Apparation would be a nightmare of epic proportions.

She can't make her brain work, she doesn't know where Seamus hid the damned DA coin, and Pidwigeon was lost to her long ago; so she's going to have to do it the Muggle way and ask to use Alec's 'mobile', a funny little black rectangle he claims can talk to anyone in the world just by pressing a button. Her father would have loved it, she thinks with a stinging sadness.

Alec places a cigarette between her lips and lights it. "Smoke that, an' I'll call th' lads an' all to help with the body. We'll drop it in the Lough tonight."

"You don't understand," Ginny says hoarsely. "They'll be sending someone when he doesn't come back. It's not safe here anymore." She inhales greedily on the cigarette, a Muggle brand. It doesn't make her hair turn purple, or give her wings, but she feels a lot calmer for certain. "I don't know what Seamus has told you..."

"That he's a wizard, yeah? Don't forget, Red, me an' Seamus have known each other since we was tykes. He's like a brother to me." Alec plucks the cigarette from her fingers and takes a puff. "So that peeler out there, he a wizard too?"

"He's not ... police." Belatedly, Ginny recalls the Muggle word for Auror. She busies herself packing a rucksack. Between herself and Seamus, they don't have much. When they ran, they only had the clothes on their backs, and one wand between them. Hers was lost during the battle, and she hasn't been able to get another without rousing suspicion. Magical Belfast isn't a place kind to outsiders, especially not if they're English, and most definitely not Sacred Twenty-Eight blood traitors. "He is — he _was_ — a monster. A murderer. He was a follower of the Dark Lord — the one who did for my whole family." She realizes she's never shared this with Alec, never said their names. She's been pushing it away since it happened, doing anything she can to forget. The Battle for Hogwarts, the Troubles, Kosovo... they slip through her memories like water, tamping down the grief she feels after each fresh death. So many gone, leaving the living broken and empty.

Alec is staring at her with wide grey eyes, the cigarette growing a long ash. "Feckin' Christ, Red. You ok?"

Ginny grabs it from him, flicking it and putting it back between her lips. "Like I said, we've got to get out of here. I'll just wait for Seamus, and — "

Alec claps a hand on her shoulder. "Red. Breathe. Seamus wouldn't want ya to wait for him. He'd want ya to be safe."

"Don't presume to speak for Seamus." Ginny prickles. Even if they are friends — and who else would have taken Seamus and her in all those months ago except a true friend, a _brother_? — even if, she is still an English girl to him, a stranger. She's a witch, and she knows he doesn't know quite what to make of the pair of them, only that they're soldiers of fortune, fighting alongside Alec and his mates in the Troubles.

"You don't feckin' know anythin' about Seamus, ya eejit," Alec says scornfully. "You don't think he doesn't protect what's in front of him, then ya don't deserve him. 'Alec,' he says to me, 'you send her to ma old gran's if anythin' happens.'" Alec stubs the cigarette out with his boot, then drops it in his pocket. He pulls Ginny up with one hand, and gives her a hard shake. "Come on, Red. I'm takin' ya to Granny Mab, and I won't take no fer an answer."

 **XxX**

Thorfinn Rowle stares in disbelief at what was once Titus Avery. There are maggots, and a lot of them. The back of the old bastard's head is split apart and all over the floor in a black sticky mess of brains and skull fragments. His eyes writhe with maggots, and in the side of his head is a perfectly round hole. If Thorfinn didn't have the presence of mind to throw his sleeve up over his nose and mouth, he's sure he would lose whatever contents are in his stomach like young Pettifer, the junior Auror forced to accompany him.

"A Muggle fireleg did this?" Thorfinn lets out a long whistle. "Shit."

"Yes." Pettifer wipes his hand on his mouth, covering the two of them belatedly with a charm to block the stench.

"Who was he supposed to be capturing, and why for fuck's sake did he go first into that room? What happened to the other Snatcher?" Thorfinn waves away the bluebottle flies, his nose wrinkling in distaste.

"Mr Avery was supervising an operation to apprehend the remaining Undesirables from 'Dumbledore's Resistance Army'. They've been stirring up unrest amongst the population," Pettifer says, clearing his throat. "The body was brought to our attention by a half-blood, a Mr Zacharias Smith. He buggered off as soon as the Muggle weaponry discharged." He stares at the body in revulsion. "This is the work of savages, no doubt about it. Do you think..." he tugs at his collar and turns greener, if that's possible. "Will the Dark Lord be..."

"Livid? Enraged? Ready to curse the messenger? Yes to all of the above." Thorfinn toes the body lightly. It lets out a _whoosh_ of rot, and groans in protest. "Where's his wand?"

Pettifer points. It's clenched in Avery's fist in a death grip. "Not it, sir."

" _Accio_ wand." Thorfinn raises a brow at the younger man, who swallows visibly, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously. " _Prior Incantatem_."

The wand gives up the ghost without a fight, and Thorfinn just looks confused.

"The Killing Curse," he says. "Sloppy. They knew he was coming."

"Evidence doesn't suggest that, sir," Pettifer whines. This auror is really starting to get on Thorfinn's nerves. If he could, he'd blast him back to next Wednesday, but he needs him, damn it all to hell. Needs must when the devil drives, and Thorfinn Rowle, for all the good it will do him, is trapped in the passenger seat.

"What does it suggest, then?" Thorfinn is starting to get bored, and it shows in his voice. "Out with it, then."

"There were two of them." Pettifer clears his throat. "See those footprints from the stairwell?" He lights them up with his wand, and they glow in the dust. "One killed Avery, then they smoked a cigarilly. _Lumos_." Two sets of prints, one large and one small. There is a copious pile of ash near the mattress. Pettifer steps into the room, gesturing for Thorfinn to follow. He's only too happy to step away from the bloated body of his former colleague.

"This is the worst excuse for a... They were _living_ here?" Thorfinn studies the room. It's small and dark, with Muggle graffiti all over the whitewashed brick walls. Thorfinn is a big man, easily topping six feet, and when he stretches his arms out, he can touch both walls with his fingertips. At one end of the room is a small nook boasting just a bare mattress, lumpy, with half the stuffing coming out of the rightmost corner. A dresser, the drawers pulled half out and etched all over with runes, sits on the floor. "It's like a cell." Thorfinn suppresses a shudder. Throw in some Dementors, and this place could pass for Azkaban's redheaded step-child. The only source of light is from three small, circular skylights around the nook, one on the ceiling and two at either foot of the bed. "Whoever lived here was mad," he says in a quiet, even tone. He sits down heavily on the bed, plucking at the stuffing. The mattress has had cleaning spells all over it, but it still reeks of eau de kneazle, and Thorfinn stands up again, this time having to hunch over under the slanted ceiling. "What do those symbols mean?" He points at the faint writing along the wall, barely visible in the dim light. It is, he realizes, blood.

"I believe they are Ogham, which was a prehistoric Muggle writing system. I didn't join the aurors to solve Muggle crimes, Mr Rowle," Pettifer says snootily. "At least the rest is in plain English. 'Fuck the police'...'The only adventure left is to destroy society'...'Fall in love, not in line'...'Stop believing in authority, start believing in each other'. Pssht! Mr Rowle, these are not the words of _stable_ people."

Thorfinn has been studying the room. It makes him sad, really, and that makes him feel deeply uncomfortable. Whoever they were... They shouldn't have been living like this.

Something shiny on top of the dresser catches his eye. It's a funny round disc on a black box, which has a long cord stuck to the wall. He picks up the disc, spinning it around on his finger. "What's this?"

"That is called...um. A wrecker. Muggles listen to music on them."

"Well, Pettifer, play it. If they're as unstable as you think, let's find out."

Pettifer shoots Thorfinn a look of deepest hatred. "I'm not a _Muggle lover,_ Mr Rowle. I don't know how to... Let me see." He places the wrecker in the machine and hits 'play'. "Huh. It really was that simple."

The song begins to play, and from what Thorfinn can decipher, it's about the person who's left behind in darkness after their lover has died. What else did he expect — something cheery? "That's enough."

Let the dead stay dead and buried. Let whoever is running stay on the run. This Muggle music strikes a chord deep inside of Thorfinn, though he would never show it. Whoever shot Avery was someone desperate, someone who had no luck left at all.

Someone who should have been buried long ago.

Thorfinn pushes the machine over, and it falls off the dresser with a shower of sparks. "What else?"

Pettifer shakes his brown curls. "Nothing, sir. I'm just a junior auror, not a Muggle detective."

Thorfinn groans in frustration. Detecting isn't exactly his strong suit. He isn't even supposed to be here, but the Dark Lord wanted one of his "most trusted allies" to oversee the process of recovering Avery and taking over his project. There's been a shocking amount of incompetence regarding the registration of Muggleborns and the arrests of Undesirables in the Ministry lately, and Thorfinn may not be the best person to bring down Dumbledore's ragtag band, but he doesn't have much choice.

He's been on thin ice ever since the leaders of Dumbledore's Army slipped through his fingers after the Battle of Hogwarts. Even though Lucius Malfoy took the fall for his son for it, it doesn't take much to get into Voldemort's black books, especially not with a fork-tongued woman like Bellatrix Lestrange whispering in his ear. If Thorfinn had bent the knee to the woman who fashions herself the Dark Lord's Queen, if he hadn't rebuffed her advances, if, if, if. Thorfinn's prowess with the ladies is legendary, but his patience with a grasping bitch like Bellatrix Black Lestrange is nil.

And she knows it.

Which is why this little plum of a job has fallen into _his_ lap: bring down the remaining members of the DA — or die trying. Any way you go about it, he's fucked.

"Methinks you doth protest too much." Thorfinn grabs Pettifer by his collar, hoisting him up. " _I_ think you're a Muggle loving spy."

He points his wand in Pettifer's face, but before either of them can get another word out, a sudden chill comes over Thorfinn, and he drops the junior auror to the floor. Pettifer scurries to the opposite wall, shaken.

There is a wisp coming up out of Avery's corpse, silvery yet opaque. Thorfinn watches as the wisp coalesces into the shape of the dead man. Honestly, he's a bit intrigued. He didn't think a wizard could come back as a ghost after being blown away by a Muggle fireleg. The junior auror is petrified on the spot, holding up his wand as though it will save him from the monstrosity that was once Titus Avery.

" _Little bitch._.." The phantom hisses. " _Where is she, the little bitch_..."

"Where is who?" Thorfinn holds his breath as the small space is cocooned in an icy miasma. "The Muggle?"

" _Little bitch... she fucking killed me._ _Blew m' brains out, Rowle. They're all over the floor, see?_ "

"Was she a Muggle, idiot."

Instead of answering, the ghost vanishes through a crack in the wall and goes howling down the pipes.

"Well, fuck," Pettifer says. "I'm fucking fucked." He pulls a pouch of tobacco from the pocket of his robes, trying to roll a smoke with shaking fingers, and spills it all over the floor instead. Swearing, he tries again, making the worst excuse for a cigarette Thorfinn has ever seen.

"What do you have to be upset about? Quit your bellyaching, Goldilocks. _Accio_ tobacco." Thorfinn sits down next to the mattress. "Let the Master handle it, Pettifer." As he begins to roll them both some smokes, a glint catches his eye. "Bingo." He waves his wand at the rafters above the bed. " _Accio_." Out shoots a wicked-looking blade as long as Thorfinn's arm. They both duck, as though in slow-motion, and it flies unheeded across the room to bury itself in the door with a _twang_.

"Would you look at that. Beautiful. I've just saved both our arses, Pettifer. Get a Trace on that thing right the fuck now."

The junior auror turns around to look at Thorfinn, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. "I'll handle this," he says in an arrogant tone, robes billowing as he strides up to the sword. "There's that Ogham again. Fuck me. Um, _Transferendum_? ...Who in fucking Merlin's fucking name is 'Fergus Finnegan'?" Pettifer reaches out to grasp the handle, and with a loud _pop_ he winks out _._

"A bloody _portkey_? You've got to be fucking kidding me." Thorfinn stuffs the tobacco into his pocket, and yields to his fate.

 **XxX**

 **A/N: The "Troubles" were a conflict in Northern Ireland that supposedly ended in 1998, but splinter groups still exist and bombings have happened since. The 30 year conflict was regarding the constitutional status of Northern goal of the unionist and Protestant majority was to remain part of the UK, while the goal of the nationalist and republican and almost exclusively Catholic minority was to become part of the Republic of Ireland. Yet according to the BBC, it was "a territorial conflict and not a religious one".**

 **Ogham is an ancient writing system that looks like tree branches.**

 **The conflict in Bosnia was between two ethnic groups, the Albanians and the Serbs. Ginny and Seamus have been living on the run and fighting in other peoples' wars for fifteen months after the loss of their own.**

 **The song that plays is "Paint it Black" by The Rolling Stones. I can't quote lyrics, but do yourself a favor and go check it out.**

 **Updates will be on a more regular basis once I get a buffer going. I currently have 5 WIPs and am beta'ing a Hunger Games fic by theoryofmice called "Overproof", which you should all go check out!**


	3. Abandonment

**A/N: I forgot to include the fancast, which is: Chris Hemsworth as Thorfinn Rowle and Holland Roden as Ginny.**

 **Remember, reviews are the only "payment" that fanfic writers get!**

 **XxX**

 **Chapter Two | Abandonment**

She wakes up, snug in bed. It smells like _home_. Her childhood quilt is on her bed, and her stuffed lion is next to her on the pillow. "Hello, Gus," she whispers. He purrs, nuzzling her cheek.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." Her father pokes his head around the door. He's wearing his nightcap and a goofy grin. "If you sleep the whole day away, Bug, you'll miss the surprise!"

"Surprise?" Her voice comes out in a squeak. She is a child again, her small hand dwarfed by his. She lets him lead her out of her room and down the twisty stairs, all the way to the kitchen where he hands her a cup of tea with heaps of sugar and cream.

"Yes, Bug. I've found the most wondrous contraption." He winks. "Don't tell your mum."

Together, they creep on tip-toe into his workshop, piled topsy-turvy with his hoard of Muggle artifacts. Little Ginny never knew the names of any of the things, but Grown-Up Ginevra likes to think she does. A record player sits on a chair with a slinky and a rubber duck, kitty-corner to a book with strange markings on the cover.

 _"_ What's this, Daddy?" Ginny holds the book up, and her father smiles indulgently, squatting on his haunches at eye level. This is when she realizes how _young_ he looks. Gone are the wrinkles and lines in his face, gone are his white hairs. He looks like he could be a few years older than Grown Up Ginny, not more than twenty-one or -two.

"Well, Bug, that's a sort of funny writing that Muggles used a long time ago. This is an account of a little witch who grew up with Muggles and learned how to do their magic. Most wizards today say it's lies because Muggles don't have magic like we do, but I think there's some truth in the old stories." Her father tousles her hair. "Why don't you hold on to it? Perhaps when you're a grown up witch you can find a use for it." The corners of his eyes crinkle with amusement.

"All right, Daddy." She slips the little book into the pocket of her night robe. "Will you show me the thingy now?"

"Yes." Her father picks her up and places her on the tall stool beside his workbench. "This is something we found on a the beach in Cornwall. Isn't it funny looking, Bug?"

Ginny has seen it before. She remembers this. The Office of Muggle Artefacts casually "lost" the item after that Christmas. Her father gave it to her, and she fell asleep with it every night until Ron stole it for himself, and broke it. "I love it," she whispers. "I'll never let it go."

"Don't tell your mother, Bug. It'll be our secret," he says with a wink. "Oh, Bug, what's wrong? Did you cut your finger?" He rummages through the junk on his workbench until he finds a rag, wrapping it around the wounded digit. "Don't cry, pet."

"I'm not hurt, Daddy." Ginny swallows a sob. "It's just that I love you so, so much."

"What's this about, love?" Her father chucks her under her chin. "Are those boys giving you a hard time again? I'll have a stern talking to with them about it, don't you worry." He hugs her with one arm, kissing the top of her head. "Better hop back in bed before your mother catches you up."

Ginny stops at the door, turning back to look at her father. He's humming happily, tinkering with a video camera. "Daddy," she whispers, but he doesn't look up. The room shimmers, and blurs, and then she finds herself opening the door to the kitchen instead of the hallway.

"Oh, Ginny! Finally. Didn't you hear me calling you?" Her mother swoops in on her, handing her an apron. There is flour and brown dough _everywhere -_ on the walls, on the ceiling, and clumped all over the floor. "Those naughty boys charmed an entire army of gingerbread men _before_ I had the chance to bake them!"

Ginny remembers this, too. Her mother had swept them all outside with a broom to de-gnome the barren winter garden. Outside the window she can hear laughter and shouts. "Mummy," she breathes, throwing her arms around her mother's waist. She is taller now than she was with her father, she realizes. She knows somehow that she is now eight years old, and Charlie has brought a friend home for Christmas, the one who calls her Little Star and throws her up in the air as though she weighs no more than a leaf.

"Oh, what's this about, love?" Her mother hugs her back, and then sees gift her father gave her. "That man! Oooh, he makes me so mad sometimes! Let me just put this up here for you, Ginevra. You won't want to get dough on it." She levitates Arthur's gift onto a high shelf, and dusts off her hands. "There we go." When she turns around, she makes a noise of surprise, her face softening. "Come sit down, Ginny dear."

Molly clears off a corner of the table, pouring herself a mug of tea, and fetches Ginny her own mug of hot, birch-sweet cider, swimming with candied orange peel. "My, my," Molly says softly. "You're here early, my wild girl. It's not quite your time yet." She reaches down, cupping Ginny's face in her hands, and places a fierce kiss upon her forehead. "Remember this, if nothing else, my darling - 'Go and catch a falling star'. Can you do that for me?"

"Mummy," Ginny says, and finds she cannot say more, the words trapped in her throat, burning like embers.

"It's almost Christmas. Everyone is here," Molly says, stirring her drink. "Almost all my lovely boys." When she looks at Ginny, her eyes are filled with a sudden, terrible grief, and a cold wind whips through the Burrow, chilling Ginny to the bone. Ginny looks up to see that the living room clock is in the kitchen with them. All hands point to **LOST** , except her own.

Instead, as the clock chimes, the hand turns, and it swings around the clock face to land on two words with a loud clang:

 **MORTAL PERIL**.

•••

Ginny wakes up with a start, flying out from under the bedcovers. The bells are ringing up and down the valley, and there is a deep green breeze, warm and bright, blowing in through the open window.

"You're awake, dear. I'd been startin' to worry."

Ginny turns her head. She is sitting upright in a small bed, pushed under the eaves. It is a small cottage, one room with a ladder leading to an upper loft. There's a fireplace and kettle hanging over a merry little purple fire; and an old woman with long white curls, so wizened and bent she must be over a century old, sits knitting at the table. "Hello," Ginny says. "You must be Granny Mab?" Her heart is pounding like a drum, and she pats at her pockets, searching belatedly for the little book.

"Your rucksack an' boots are beside the door, dear. You were so muddled up when you came, that I put you to bed straightaway."

"Oh no, I'm sorry!" Ginny throws her legs over the side of the bed. She is barefoot. "I hope we didn't inconvenience you."

"I don't get inconvenienced by the young. I'm too old to be botherin' about it. But it did give me quite a start when Seamus' little Muggle friend showed up at my doorstep this afternoon with an unconscious _cailin_ in tow!" Her cloudy green eyes peer hard at Ginny. "You must be Seamus' witch."

Ginny feels her cheeks heat. "I'm not, I mean we're not - in _love_ or anything," she explains, badly. "Is he here?" She listens, straining to hear his step, his whistle, the sound of his voice, and when nothing is forthcoming, she slumps against the bed frame, her heart on the ground.

"Not in love with my great-grandson, hmm? Well, girl, he isn't here, and I'm just as worried as you are - and _I_ love him more than anythin'." A raven swoops into the room, a letter on its leg. Granny Mab unfurls it, tossing the raven a piece of meat. "Hmm, hmm. Interestin'." She looks up at Ginny, and her cloudy eyes are suddenly sharp. "Fergus says here he needs to meet with ya. He'll be at the Muggle pub in the village at nine o'clock tonight." She grins, showing a mouthful of white, even teeth. "He plays the pipes with the local lads. Tells me, 'Oh, Granny Mab, it's the _craic_!' But I'm too old to go out dancin' like a young witch. You'll like it, but maybe not, you bein' an English witch an' all. Fergus is Seamus' cousin, an' a handsome devil. Don't let him turn your head." She waves her hand at the kitchen counter. "There's some tea for ya there, and a bit of bread an' jam."

"Can I help you with anything, since I'm here?" Ginny's stomach gives an embarrassing growl. She realizes she's had nothing to eat for hours, and she's about to tear into the loaf like a ravenous wolf in front of Seamus' granny. "I used to help my mother around the house a lot, I have - I had -" she has to take a deep breath. "I _had_ six lazy brothers, you see."

(Past tense: " **LOST** ", like the arm of a Time Turner that won't stop spinning.)

 _"_ I shift well enough on ma own, and I have Fergus' elf, Peasy, to help out when I need it. If you're so keen on it though, I do have one thing you could help me with."

Ginny's mouth is full of thick, chewy bread, and she gulps it down with a swallow of tea. "Yes, ma'm."

The old woman takes the teacup from her, studying the remains with a grave expression. "Aye, my Seamus has caught himself _réalta ag titim_ , I see." She looks up from the cup. "There's a little pot by the door with milk and honey in it. Take the path to the heart of the forest, and say 'For the spirits, seen an' unseen.' Then walk away without looking back. Get on with you now, child." She makes shooing motions, and that is how Ginny finds herself at the edge of a greenwood, branches twisting up towards the wide open sky.

She isn't sure if she's in Magical Ireland or Muggle Ireland, or someplace else entirely, but she's not a superstitious witch, so she begins walking down the forest track. Here, the sunlight falls in patches on the forest floor, illuminating sudden scenes of simple beauty: moss on carved stones that may or may not have faces, a tiny butterfly drinking from a toadstool, a centaur foal hiding amongst the ferns.

And then she is there, at the very heart of the forest.

In front of her is a cairn, piled high with stones. It hums with old magic, the kind that cannot be found in books. Without knowing why, she steps closer to it, and sees glowing blue scratches, letters like twigs, begin to form on each and every stone. She reaches out, when she hears her mother's voice echo in the clearing.

( _Don't!)_

Her hand drops. The stones hum, and the writing begins to move sinuously across the rocks, twining all together in a braided chain of glowing blue. As Ginny watches, it flows to the base of the pile, and onto the ground, making a path further into the forest. The branches quiver, leaves blowing towards the path, and Ginny takes a reckless step forward, away from the cairn.

" _Ginny_..." Seamus' voice beckons, and her feet fly down the blue road, shimmering and weaving through the trees. In the forest, she hears the sound of laughter, the voices of the twins and Percy, as though from far away and yet close by all at once, and she presses faster on. At last, the path ends, and she finds herself gasping for breath before a burial mound, set in a hillock overgrown with yarrow and mugwort and Devil's Snare.

The blue vines snake up the side of the barrow, revealing a weathered oaken door set into the side, so small Ginny would have to crawl on her hands and knees to make it through. Belatedly, she remembers Granny Mab's instructions.

 _(Don't leave the path_. )

But surely this is where the path has led her? So it can't be wrong. She wishes she had a wand again, it's like losing a limb to be without it. "Oh, Seamus," Ginny whispers. Then she pulls the door open, and ducks inside.

•••

She crawls for what seems like hours in the crushing darkness, just a tiny blue light in front of her to guide her way, twisting and turning, deeper and deeper into the land. The walls are earthen and damp, they smell of fallen leaves and a long held decay. At last, the ground slopes upwards, and Ginny finds herself in a small cavern, bathed in blue light. In front of her is an altar made of carven stone, creeping all over with ivy.

 _(Who goes there?)_

Ginny jumps at the sound of the voice, at once both loud and soft in the little room.

She opens her mouth without thinking, and gives her full name. "Ginevra Weasley."

As she watches, the blue writing spirals on the floor, moving up in a column of light until the figure of a tall woman appears, so beautiful she is painful to look upon; clad in a gown of gray, with bittersweet and tiny skulls woven through her dark locks. When she speaks, it is in a voice that is both silvery and rough, like the tinkling of a thousand tiny discordant bells.

( _Rise, Ginevra Weasley_.)

She hadn't realized she was lying in supplication. Slightly embarassed, she gets to her knees, dusting herself off, and the Lady touches her forehead.

( _Why have you come, Ginevra? What will you have of Me?_ )

Ginny pulls the earthenware jug from her pocket, miraculously unbroken. She uncorks it, and offers it to the Lady. "Milk and honey, for the spirits - seen and unseen."

( _Ah. I see into your heart. It is not yet your time, little witch. The ones you seek are gone from this world - though they will always be with you._ )

Ginny feels white-hot heat behind her eyes, and she fights the burning tide that wells up, threatening to drown her. "Please, my Lady, where is he?"

( _The one who holds your heart, or the one who shall yet hold it? You ask the wrong questions, but I give you the right answer. To heal, little star, you must face the Shadow - and vanquish it._ )

With a rush of color, she glows so brightly that the room nearly explodes, and Ginny falls with her hands over her ears, unsure if she is screaming or if the sound is coming from all around her.

•••

 _"NOOOO!" The keening wail comes from Professor McGonagall, tears pouring down her cheeks,_ but it is Ginny who breaks from her mother's embrace to dash toward Harry's broken body. In her throat is a scream that will not budge, and she kneels beside him, holding his hand to her cheek.

"Harry, Harry, wake up... Please wake up, please!" Ginny presses her ear to Harry's rapidly cooling chest, hands bunched in his shirt, breath coming in short gasps. "Don't die, no, Harry, please get up! We need you - _I_ need you." The last is said in a cracked whisper, and the tears begin to fall in a rush, blurring her sight.

"Poor little blood traitor," a voice hisses, and to her shock, it is coming not from Lord Voldemort's twisted form, lying beside Harry, but from Harry himself. Ginny freezes in wonderment, which swiftly turns to horror.

Harry is _not_ Harry - not _her_ Harry - not anyone's. It is a cruel jest, a foul trick. A wicked smile twists his lips, and a ribbon of blood, black and thick, dribbles slowly from the center of his ear.

A cheer goes up from the Light side, but Ginny is scrambling away from this false Harry, her hands over her mouth, _No no no_ a litany on her lips.

"Hello, Ginevra," Tom Riddle's voice coos.

The excitement that the Light has won is short-lived, a bitter pill. Lord Voldemort has taken possession of his Horcrux, and is quick to take advantage of the confusion by firing a swift series of _Avada Kedavras_ \- at Hagrid, who crumples where he stands, tears for his ' 'Arry' still wet on his cheeks; at Bill, who is distracted with shooing his new wife away; and at McGonagall, hit right in the back as she calls for the children to _Run, run!_

That is when the Massacre of Hogwarts begins.

The Death Eaters began to howl, led by Fenrir Greyback, the eerie sound chilling Ginny straight to her bones. Ron is sunken and gray, tears pouring down his cheeks, and Hermione grips his hand like a lifeline, knuckles white as paste.

"Go, Ginevra," her mother whispers, her voice like steel. "Run and run, and don't stop until you are home at the Burrow."

If Ginny had known it was the last time she would see her parents alive, she would have said different things, but instead her heart curdles in her chest in anger, for she wants to kill the one who has taken Harry from her and disgraced his memory. And so as she turns from her mother, she whispers terrible, cruel words she regrets even as they fly from her mouth. Her father raises his arms to embrace her, and lets them fall, pain in his eyes.

Later, she would hear tales of how the Order stood tall, mown down like sheaves of wheat in a dark harvest. How Fleur took the Killing Curse meant for two first year Hufflepuffs, found later with their hands laced in hers, held so tightly that not even death could tear them asunder. Of Kingsley Shacklebolt and Alastor Moody, who perished trying to pull down the Great Hall upon the head of the Dark Lord, and who instead were crushed to death themselves. Of Molly and Arthur, struck by a curse that burned them from within, found in each other's arms, their charred bodies good for nothing more than fuel for the pyre made from the bodies of the slain.

•••

At first Ginny runs with her brothers, until one by one they drop away, and she is suddenly alone in a dark corridor, lost, her footsteps echoing in the dim. Behind her is the roar of the pursuing Death Eaters and the screams of her friends, before her is a set of dark stairs, leading away to nothingness.

There is a sudden noise like thunder, and the walls of the castle shake, tossing her to the floor. When Ginny is able to rise, she hears a feeble cry from the way she came, and she runs back, just in time to find Charlie Weasley, her second eldest brother, lying half under the pile of rubble, blood leaking from his mouth.

"Ginny," Charlie whispers, a smile blossoming across his face. His eyes are glossy with pain.

They come out of nowhere.

Before she realizes what is happening, several Death Eaters charge down the corridor, hot on the heels of Dean, Hannah, and Neville, who is limping, fresh blood oozing from a puncture mark in his side. None of them have their wands.

"Gotcha!" Scabior crows, catching Ginny by her braid. She screams, trying to get a bead on him with her wand, and he grabs it, tossing it to Goyle Sr, who snaps it in half with a final crunch.

"Nooooo!" Ginny howls, and more Snatchers rush forward, cornering the others. Pulled along by the dark wave, Ginny can only struggle, screaming Charlie's name.

And then the dark wizards are upon them, laughing as they fling Dean and Neville into Body Binds and begin to brutally rape Hannah. Neville is fighting the spell and shouting, tears streaming freely down his cheeks. Dean is yelling at them, _You fuckers, you cowards, leave them alone, take me instead!_

Ginny begins to scream in earnest for her brothers.

She hadn't known, then.

Behind her on the floor, Hannah is sobbing, _No, no, the baby!_ , and Ginny wrests herself from Scabior's grip, throwing herself on MacNair's back. He is not the first to get atop Hannah, and he is making animalistic grunts, wand jammed deep against her throat as he thrusts.

"Get off her!" Ginny grabs a handful of his hair and goes sprawling back in Hannah's blood as the man whips around with a roar.

"The little blood traitor wants some of what her friend got, does she?" MacNair cackles. Goyle Sr has already taken his place with Hannah, and she is silent now.

It comes out of nowhere. A sudden _pulling_ in the air, a _tightness_ , and the air _snaps_ \- leaving MacNair, Scabior, and Goyle Sr. unconscious on the floor. The other Snatchers scatter, and run.

Out of the shadows steps a tall man, face hidden by a black hood. Beside him is Draco Malfoy, his face pale and determined. Their wands are held out in front of them like swords.

"Where's Granger?" Draco demands, and Ginny shakes her head, mutely.

Her whole body is shivering, she cannot seem to stop. Draco nods, and hurries to help the boys and Hannah, who is limp and unresponsive. Neville is dazed, he cradles Hannah's head in his lap. Dean stands over them as Draco tries unsuccessfully to revive Hannah. His shoulders are hunched in grief.

Ginny wants to move towards them but cannot, she feels the weight of their accusation by the way their backs turn against her. She should have stopped it. She tried, she _tried_.

"Charlie Weasley sent me," says the tall wizard in a deep voice, one that is tight with a barely restrained fury. "Where is Star?"

Ginny steps forward, disbelievingly, pushing back the black hood and staring up into the stunned blue eyes of Charlie's former friend, memories from long ago filling her mind. Of a tall boy who threw her into the air and called her _little star_ , who read her strange and wondrous poems, who told her impossible, fantastic tales of the exploits of his Viking ancestor and namesake. "Thorfinn?" She whispers, brushing back a lock of dark gold hair that has fallen over his eyes.

He catches her hand, searching her face. "They're coming," he says, urgently. "They're coming, and they won't stop until you're all dead. So take your friends and run now, little star. Run and run and keep running. Malfoy and I will Obliviate these bastards - but I can't keep you safe unless you do exactly as I say."

"Thorfinn – " she says, and she grabs his wrist, where she finds a little bracelet, worn by wear throughout the years. On it is a rune, and Ginny _remembers_ \- a boy, crying for his mother in Molly's arms, a broken amulet, a missing friend on Christmas morning. "You - "

"I hope to see you on the other side someday," he says. And with a gentle push, he sends her towards the future, to gather Neville and Dean, and to keep running, down the rocky path that opens up before them, and the abyss of grief and anger that will carry them across the bleak years to come.

 **XxX**

Translation: " _realta ag titim_ " means "a falling star".


	4. Atonement

**Chapter Three | Atonement**

Ginny wakes in the summer dusk to the hoot of an ordinary, non-magical owl. The air is heavy and ripe with expectation. She is alone at the edge of the wood, and she checks herself, in case she's splinched. She doesn't remember Apparating.

"Miss Ginny!" Ginny punches upwards, hitting a tiny elf in the nose. "Ouch! Miss Ginny has hurt Peaseblossom, yes she has!"

"Oh no, I'm really sorry. Did you say your name was _Peaseblossom_?"

The elf sniffs, hopping off Ginny's chest. She is a small creature, with slitted yellow eyes like a cat. She bows, but maybe she's doing it to be ironic. "Miss Ginny should thank Peasy, yes she should. When Peasy found Miss Ginny she was down a nasty hole! Miss Ginny should know better than to go into the old hillforts, yes she should. At least not without iron!" Peasy cocks her head at Ginny. "You is a stupid girl! Acting like a Muggle, and not a smart one neither!" She snaps her fingers in front of Ginny's nose.

Ginny sits up, rubbing her temples. She can feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. "Well, thank you and I'm sorry. How's that?"

"Mistress told Miss Ginny not to go off the path, but Miss Ginny didn't listen, what will mistress think? She will be very mad at Miss Ginny, yes she will! Now you come, Miss Ginny. It is almost time to meet Master at the pub where he plays the hideous wailing pipes! Oh, it is the most terrible noise! Peasy hates it, but she will go because Master asks."

Ginny raises a brow. "That was quite the run-on sentence, Peasy. And I didn't leave the path - I found it. Now," she says, batting away the elf as it seems about to fly into a fit of pique, "What time is it? And how do I get to this place? I'll hazard a guess and say you're to be my escort, Peasy."

Peasy sticks her snout in the air, brushing her scrap of a dress off as regally as a house elf can. "Miss Ginny is not dressed proper for a _ceilidh_ **.** Granny wants Peasy to bring Miss Ginny back and have her put on a dress."

Ginny looks down on herself. She has leaves and bits of petals in her hair, just as she had on that Beltane so long ago, when she leapt over the fire and into the woods like a young doe, hoping beyond hope that Harry would be the one to catch her first.

•••

 _You're my wild goddess, my evening star_ , Seamus had whispered as the moon rose and set around them, and all the stars in the heavens seemed to shimmer when he spoke. _I may never get another chance to tell you, so I'm sayin' it now, even though I know your heart is promised to another._

And even though her heart _had_ been promised to Harry, her treacherous flesh danced with the flames of desire when Seamus' mouth traced the line of her jaw with his kisses, when he suckled her nipples through her shift, and pulled her down to the mossy floor of the forest, his hands guiding her hips as she rode him as though over hill and dale, not once, not twice, but all through the night, their twining bodies bathed in the glow of the moon.

It had not been about whether she loved Harry or not, but about doing whatever they could to help him win. The land had called for blood, and Ginny and Seamus had given it willingly. And in the end, when all their luck ran out, and the world fell to pieces around them, she couldn't help but wonder if things would have turned out differently with another choice. But even so, she could not regret it.

Harry never gave a sign that he had missed her that night, for he too came back from the forest with leaves in his hair and an entirely too-satisfied Luna Lovegood. Luna and Ginny had made eye contact across the glen, and Ginny had known if it had been any other morning, she would have flown at the other witch with tooth and claw. But she could be magnanimous. If Luna had caught Harry fair and square, then why, she wished her the joy of him. It was Ginny who would warm his bed after the Battle, and be his chosen queen in the world to come.

But that world never came, and with it died all of her hopes and dreams.

For instead of standing proud and true against an evil wind, like a Light witch should, Ginny turned and ran: down the winding road, salt cast over her shoulder, never to return - lest she too be swept away.

•••

There is a dress laid out on the bed when Ginny arrives back at the cottage. She doesn't want to touch it. It is entirely too fine, and worst of all, there is nowhere to holster the gun.

"How d' ya like it?" Granny Mab hobbles into the cottage, beaming. "I know 'tis old, but it belonged to me when I was yet a _cailin_."

"And how long ago was _that_?" Ginny asks archly, a sly grin quirking up the corner of her mouth. For the dress is definitely seventy years old if it's a day, if not more. She holds it up against her, a shimmery silver dress with lots of fringe and crystal beads that make a tinkling noise when they clack together. It comes to barely mid-thigh, and she'll have to be especially clever with how she hides the gun. "You were a daring young witch, weren't you, Granny?"

"Ah now, that would be telling," Granny Mab says with a wink. "I know 'tisn't modern, but a good dress should see a witch through all the years o' her life, don't you agree?"

Ginny tries to imagine the little old lady in the silver dress and smothers a giggle with her hand. "It's just... No offense, Granny, but you said it's a Muggle pub. I should blend in. And this dress is beautiful, but..." She fingers the fringe.

"It's beautiful! Did you hear that, mistress? Miss Ginny must wear it now!" The little house elf bobs her head. "'Twould be rude not to, mmm hmm."

Looking from the beaming Granny Mab to the gleeful Peasy, Ginny is torn. With a sigh, she supposes she can dress it down with her jacket, and hide the gun holster under that besides. "All right."

"It's all settled, then." Granny Mab pats Ginny's shoulder. "You'll see, chick. It'll all turn out right."

•••

Peasy proves to be more helpful than Ginny could have predicted - once the silvery dress is on, she arranges Ginny's hair in a long fishtail braid down her back, laced with dandelions and feathers. Despite Ginny's insistence about blending in, Peasy is firm. A _ceilidh_ is a _ceilidh_ , after all, and Ginny wouldn't dare shame Granny, would she?

When she is dressed, Ginny looks into the mirror, and a stranger looks back. Who is this elegant creature? Certainly not a Weasley girl.

Seamus will be more surprised than anyone to see her in a dress. His absence is an itch she cannot scratch, and it bothers her more than she would ever let on. She touches her face in the mirror, trying to reconcile this silvery creature with _Red_ , who wears all black and a perpetual sneer on her freckled face, who can mix a mean Molotov cocktail and ride a broom bare-breasted into battle. Red is Ginny's mocking reflection, feral amber eyes gleaming beneath powder and paint.

 _I dare you_ , her expression says.

Ginny takes a deep breath, turning from the mirror, Seamus' gun dark and heavy in her hand. She has killed a man today, and though he was her enemy, she can't help but wonder how many more men she will have to kill before all of this is done.

•••

Ginny hears the music as she walks over the hill, drawing her down into the valley, swelling and spilling out of the open doors of the pub into the warm evening air. She wishes she had a Disillusionment charm cast around her, but no one gives her a second glance. If anything, the looks she does get are those of the speculative kind, laced with appreciation, lingering on her legs and her arse. She stifles a laugh. No one is looking for a witch, and no one would recognize schoolgirl Ginny Weasley, late of Dumbledore's Resistance Army, with her hair braided and her eyes kohled. She is safe as Goblin gold.

Feeling a little more confident, she puts a swing in her step, but it flounders when she realizes there's no way she'll be able to get into the front door of the pub — the building is packed to capacity.

"Excuse me, but can you tell me what's going on?" She asks a sandy-haired boy a few years her senior. He's wearing a black leather jacket, and has a sharp, foxy face. A cigarette dangles from his lip. "Why are there so many fucking people here tonight?"

"Don't you know?" He asks. "Why, it's to celebrate the soon and comin' liberation." He winks at Ginny, tossing the cigarette under his boot. "A pretty _cailin_ like you was made for dancin'. Care to take a spin?"

"What, here?" Ginny glances around. She knows how to mix explosives and how to drink a big man under the table, but the intricacies of Muggle dance are a skill that has passed her by. She wouldn't even know where to begin.

"No," the boy says, and he holds out his hand. "I can get us in through the back. You only live once, right?" He has a wicked, devil-may-care grin and a glint in his eyes that isn't quite trustworthy, but Ginny doesn't care about trustworthy tonight. She only cares about finding Fergus fucking Finnigan, and showing him the business end of a .44.

He'll regret the day he ever crossed her and Seamus, even if it means she has to flee the country tonight. Blood is blood, and there's nothing worse than a traitor, at least not in Ginny's book. Fergus might not have tipped their hand to Avery, but who else could it be?

Who else has bridges to burn?

"Right," Ginny says. "But you'd better not make trouble for me, and that's a promise."

"Cheeky for an English bird, aren't ya?" The boy wags a finger in her face. "Be careful, little red, there are wolves about."

"Trust me, Irish boy, nothing scares _this_ English girl any longer."

"Nothing?" He arches a brow, disbelievingly. "Aye, if you're so sure as all that..." He gestures with one hand, and Ginny follows him to the back alley, lit only by a yellow lamp over the back door that flickers on and off. Moths cluster around it, their wings humming.

"Now will ya dance with me? Far from the madding crowd?" He holds out a hand, and whirls her into a frenzied dance, their bodies pressed together tight and hot between the walls of the alley. His hand is still on her waist when he spins her to a halt, tipping her back, his lips at her ear. "Now that's what I call a proper dance. How about a kiss then?"

Ginny is saved from introducing him to up close and personal to her knee in his nuts when a door slams against the brickwork, causing him to push her away.

"Some lookout you are, Jackaroo!" A dark-haired man with a ponytail and a thick mustache comes through the back door and stops short. "A girl! Why am I not surprised?" He goes to smack the boy upside the head, and Jackaroo dodges him, jumping back neatly to Ginny's other side. The man's hand goes to his holster at the same time Ginny's goes to hers, and they both drop their hands from their guns at Jackaroo's loud, mocking laugh.

He is casually unrepentant. "No one noticed anythin'. They're all too drunk, the feckin' bastards." He turns to Ginny, showing his teeth. It is not exactly a smile. She steps back, and his hand snaps out, catching her wrist and pulling her close.

Jackaroo slides a long knife out from his sleeve, pressing the tip to her throat. "Where are _you_ going, Little Red?"

 _You won't know the enemy when you see him_ , _Star_ , Thorfinn's voice whispers down the years. _You'll look at him, and he'll look at you, and you'll think the two of you are the same, just ordinary people. Don't make that mistake. If you have a bad feeling, don't give a wolf the chance to come in through the door. It'll always devour you, in the end._

That big Viking bastard should have taken his own advice. Shaking off the memory, Ginny reaches back into her holster for the gun, when Jackaroo leans in, his lips brushing across the line of her jaw.

 _Shit. Shit, shit, shit_.

"You're lucky you're so fierce, Little Red. You might survive this thing after all. I'm going t' tell you this because I like ya, and because you dance like the devil's mistress. Here 'tis: _Run_."

He leans in, pressing a kiss against Ginny's forehead. He smells of sulfur and gelignite, something she didn't notice during their impromptu dance, too concerned with pretending to be an ordinary girl.

 _The up and comin' Liberation_.

Her pulse speeds up, and she draws back from him in horror. "If ya have anyone that means anythin' to ya, I suggest ya get them out right now. You have anywhere between six and sixteen minutes. _Go_!" He blows a handful of dust into her face, and she screams, clawing at her eyes as the ground rushes up to meet her face. A loud _click_ sounds in her ear.

"And if you tell the peelers, we know where to find ya, 'Miss Finnigan'." She feels the back tag of Granny's dress rip off, and goes still when the cold muzzle of a gun presses against the nape of her neck. "Don't think I don't know someone who's loyalty lies on t' other side." She opens blurry eyes, just in time to see the heavy toe of a boot coming towards her side, and she rolls desperately away, scrabbling for her gun. She points it upwards at the owner of the boot, drawing back the pin.

Instead of kicking her, the boot slams into the dust again, and Ginny rolls onto her hands and knees, choking on the taste of gunpowder and grit.

When her eyes are clear, the two of them have vanished from the alleyway. She brushes the dress off the best she can, the shimmery material repelling the dust like it was never there. _A good dress ought to last a witch all the days o' her life..._

And the hand on the clock, landing on two words and her picture: _ **MORTAL PERIL**_ _._

Sick inside, Ginny looks at the pub before her. _Six and sixteen minutes._ How many has she wasted on her knees? Two? Ten? She's going to be brave and reckless, but she stopped living with regrets a long time ago.

If the Battle of Hogwarts didn't kill Ginny Weasley, then a fifty pound Muggle bomb can't stop her now.

"Ginny? Ginny Weasley?"

A curly-haired Irishman with Seamus' nose and charming grin is standing behind her in the alleyway. Ginny whirls on him, hand reaching for a non-existent wand. He holds his hands up, apologetically. "You're Seamus' _cailin_ , the English witch? Ginny, innit?"

She nods, barely, spitting out blood between her teeth, and he looks at her askance. "Fergus Finnigan, I presume."

He takes her by the shoulder, and before Ginny can protest, he is steering her into the back of the pub. "I'm sorry," Fergus says.

For a single moment, she believes him.

•••

Thorfinn has been listening to the worst excuse for Muggle music for the past three hours without cease. He would never admit the fact in mixed magical company, but the beer and the women make up for it. He'll put up with the unholy wailing of a hundred thousand pipes if it means several barrels of this nectar they call 'stout' and a willing woman or three in his bed, cooing over his tattoos and calling him "Viking". He could tell them his real name, and that he's actually descended from the most fucking legendary Viking wizard of all time, but he has a feeling none of them would believe a word of it come morning. And that's all the better for him.

Pettifer, meanwhile, fucking passed out after the first half-barrel like a weakling, and has been snoring under the table ever since.

Thorfinn misses the bastard - barely. He would have liked to have gotten the junior Auror laid for all his trouble, at least. Finding Fergus Finnigan was the easy part. Getting the little shit to give up his secrets without anything short of Versitarum tipped into his beer has been a fucking nightmare.

But in the end, the bastard caved. They always do. _Crucio_ isn't pretty, but it's a means to an end.

To make the night even worse, Finnigan has been trying to fuck off to Apparate away at every set break, the fucking sneaky bastard. If Fergus didn't have the pugnacious mien of a Gryffindoor written all over him, Thorfinn would swear the young man was Slytherin through and through.

Now they wait for Finnigan's feckless cousin to show. And if 'waiting' means a woman in his lap and a pint in his hand, Thorfinn isn't complaining. He's pretty sure some of the appreciative glances shot his way have held their share of recognition. And why not? Thorfinn Rowle has laid a few more than his share, between his time at Hogwarts, the inglorious end of his Quidditch career, and the rise of the Dark Lord.

"Ilvermorny, my arse," Thorfinn mutters, slamming another pint of stout and glaring at Finnigan.

"Let's give it up for one o' our local lads, home all the way from America tonight, Fergus Finnigan!" The roar that goes up from the dance floor could rival Krum's fans at the Quidditch World Cup. The crowd begins drumming their fists on the countertops and tables, stomping their boots in a sound like thunder that rattles the entire building so hard Thorfinn is half-convinced the roof is about to cave in.

"Fergus Finnigan, I love you!" A girl screams over the roar of the crowd. She's standing on a table, and she jumps to the next, and then the next, trying to get closer to the stage. She reaches Thorfinn's table and strains on tiptoe, trying to see over the heads of the crowd. He can see straight up her skirt. She isn't wearing any knickers.

What the fuck has Fergus fucking Finnigan done to inspire such adoration? With a shake of his head, Thorfinn puts the girl on his shoulders and rises, towering above the crowd. She whips her bra out of her shirt to appreciative wolf whistles, and it whirls through the air, landing on the stage. There's another roar from the crowd, and all of a sudden, two girls that Thorfinn has heard called 'jailbait', in ripped netted stockings, clunky black boots, and skirts that barely cover their thighs begin fighting one another by the steps to the stage, pulling hair and squealing. The girl on Thorfinn's shoulders leaps off, going to the defense of her friend. She throws a pint at the other girl, and misses. It hits a man in the back of the head. He turns around, putting a fist into the nose of his neighbor.

The mood of the crowd surges so violently that Thorfinn is left reeling at the sudden sea change. All of a sudden, glass is smashing, the pipes are wailing, and Thorfinn has to duck as a chair nearly takes him out. He meets Finnigan's satisfied eye across the room, and the fiend starts fiddling a tune with his wand that raises the emotion in the room to a fever pitch.

"Now, now, ladies," Finnigan chuckles into the microphone. "There's a piece of Fergus Finnigan for everyone!"

"I've got you now, you fucker," Thorfinn announces, keeping his eye trained on Finnigan as he advances, wand at the ready. For some reason the spell isn't affecting him like it is the Muggles, but then, their beer didn't affect him much either. The local Obliviation squad is going to have their hands full tonight.

That is, until a badly glamoured house elf rushes onto the stage, whispering something in Finnigan's ear that makes the man's face go bloodless. Thorfinn would pay a golden Knut to hear whatever it said, but it rushes away, towards the back room. Pushing bodies out of the way, Thorfinn dodges his way through the crowd, all the way to the back, where he meets Finnigan at the door. He crosses his arms.

"You'd better have a good explanation for this, Finnigan," Thorfinn growls, his hand bunched in the man's shirt.

"I'll only be a minute!" Fergus pleads. "Then you'll have who you came for and you can take them back to hell or Azkaban, for all I care!"

And Finnigan is good as his word. Not two minutes later, he's shoving someone into Thorfinn's arms, someone who is covered in dust and bruises, copper hair tickling his nose with a faint, familiar scent lost long ago - one that goes straight to his heart and rocks him right down to the bone.

It's cinnamon and ginger, it's spice and mulled cider, it's the echo of the aurora borealis on a still night, cracking and sizzling across the northern sky.

 _"Star_ ," Thorfinn breathes.

And the world explodes.


	5. Aegis

**Chapter Four | Aegis**

When Thorfinn wakes, he is standing at the prow of a dragon ship. He looks down at his hands. In one hand is a double bladed battle axe, carved all over with runes ( _Aegishjalmur, Vegvisir, Valnott_ ), in the other a wand made of ash. It is said that Thorfinn the Bold climbed the world tree itself to cut his wand from the branches of the upper realms, that he has battled the fiercest of the _jötunn_ and survived with only a scar to mark his arm in the shape of a man's skull, and that he is descended from Odin himself. He is only twenty-six, but his reputation precedes him as though he is a hero of the Eddas already. Men speak his name in hushed tones, awed to drink at his table and battle beside him, women swoon over his dark gold hair and ice blue eyes, fighting over the honor to warm his bed at night, even if they are married to other men.

"Are you ready, wizard?" Thorfinn turns to the man standing next to him. He knows without knowing why that this man is known as _Fenrir_ , and he is the leader of the Viking band Thorfinn raids with. He is a man whom Thorfinn has fought and fucked beside for many years, but they will never trust one another, not entirely.

Fenrir respects Thorfinn's methods, but he also fears his powers. The man has a long, braided black beard, and he wears a snarling wolf's head over his own. His face is scarred with decades of battle, he is called _Úlfheðnar_ in the old tongue, for in battle he becomes like a raging wolf, with no regard for friend or foe.

"Ready?" Thorfinn asks, and his booming laugh fills the space. "I was _born_ ready, _Úlfheðnar_! Those foolish Britons will learn what it means to bend the knee, and swear fealty to their new masters!"

"Our spies tell me their high chieftain has a witch in his retinue - one of _your_ folk. There!" Fenrir sniffs the air, and his terrible smile is a wicked thing to behold. "She smells like cloves and fire, and the last of the autumn's wind. Leave some left for me, brother, and I promise I will _devour_ her."

On the far distant cliffs, Thorfinn can just make out a figure with hair that glows like fire, arms raised, charming up a storm. The skies darken, and the waves rise, battering the ship like a cork. "I see her!" He takes the broom that Fenrir proffers him, sheathing the axe on his back, and rises in the wind, pointing his wand towards the witch on the cliff.

" _Stǫðva_!" Thorfinn roars, just as the arc of her spell slams into his, glowing silvery and blue. He flies like a dragon, swooping in and out of the currents of wind that slam into him from all sides. The wench is _good_. But he is better.

As soon as he nears the edge of the cliff, he swoops low, using the element of surprise to grab the witch by the waist and pull her into the air. "Stop this, or I will drop you into the ocean!"

She struggles in his grip, her eyes wild. She is a fierce little thing, copper haired, with blue woad dotted under her eyes and a necklace of sharp teeth around her neck. She fights him with tooth and claw, feral amber eyes never once leaving his face. " _(Viking_!)" Her wild language leaves a strange music in his ears.

"That's right, I am a Viking, witch!" Thorfinn growls. "Now, end your spell and let my men into the harbor!"

She seems to understand him, for all they do not speak the same language, and she raises her chin, clearly defying him.

An instant is all it takes. She fumbles with the driftwood wand in her hand at the same time Thorfinn adjusts his grip on her, and the wand slips from her hands, dropping towards the wine-dark sea below. She dives after it, plummeting in free fall, her long hair streaming out behind her like the tail of a comet. Down, down she goes toward the open water, her screams lost to the wind.

Thorfinn points the broom down, and follows her, blurring into a stream of gold and green light. From the ship and the shore, he can hear shouts and screams, but all has lost meaning. She hits the water with a sound like a thunderclap, ripples of white-blue magic reverberating across the surface of the ocean.

Without thinking, Thorfinn dives in after her, just in time to see an enormous dark shape open a maw filled with a thousand needle teeth.

He acts on reflex, pulling out his axe and slamming it into the head of the beast. Inky reddish-black liquid fills the water, clouding his vision. And the red-haired witch is still falling.

The monster flounders, thrashing in the water and creating a wake that slams into Thorfinn so hard that the axe is ripped from his hand. He points his wand at the monster, and it writhes madly, until its death throes consume it. Lungs straining, Thorfinn kicks after the body of the Briton witch, managing to catch her arm before the body of the beast hits the ocean floor. The seismic echo blasts a wave of such magnitude towards them that they hurtle out of the water and into the air, and he curls his body around hers, muttering charms of protection. They land in the shallows, between earth, sea and sky.

There is a loud scream from the shore, but Thorfinn ignores it to bend his lips to those of the Briton witch, breathing air into her lungs. Around him, the storm roars its displeasure. He could kill her now. It is what his king would expect, after all. But when the feared Viking wizard looks down on the freckled face of the Briton witch, he knows he will not harm her, and that from this moment on, he will defend her with his life, until Ragnorak or Valhalla - whichever comes first.

She flops onto her side, coughing up water. When she rolls back over, she catches his hand in hers, bringing it to her cheek. And she smiles. He realizes then that she is more than beautiful, she is enchantment itself, and he is dazzled, intoxicated. It is as though he has been struck by elf-shot.

She sits up, just as an older girl, one with wild golden-brown curls, comes running down the shore, throwing her arms around her and bursting into joyful tears. The older girl babbles excitedly, miming Thorfinn's rescue of her friend. Thorfinn, meanwhile, sits back on his haunches and watches them. They are not sisters, but the other girl has magical blood, he's certain of it. Has he stumbled upon some sort of magical enclave? What is going on?

A crowd of people converge on the beach, laughing and crying and hugging one another as the clouds break overhead and the sun shines bright and cold in the autumn sky. They all seem to want to touch Thorfinn and the little witch, to make sure that they aren't dreaming, that they are both real.

One man holds back, however - a tall man with dark hair and hard green eyes. He is their leader, Thorfinn thinks. He can be no other - they are all deferential to him, though not cringing. Though he is bare chested, he is painted with blue swirls across his bare skin, and around his neck, a necklace laced with antlers. He studies Thorfinn with his eyes narrowed, then turns to the hooded man at his side, gesturing at Thorfinn. Thorfinn's hand goes to his hip for his wand, but it is no longer there.

Suddenly, the Britons all freeze, like a herd of terrified deer. Their fear is palpable. They seem to shrink back, hiding behind their leader. His eyes soften as they flick towards the little witch, half in worship, half in fear.

"Brother." Fenrir's chuckle echoes throughout the little cove. Thorfinn turns, to find his Viking brethren have anchored their ship, and their number is strung across the waterline, waiting for Fenrir's signal. Fenrir sniffs the air. "She smells of ink and vellum," he announces, pointing at the curly-haired girl, who draws back in terror. "And she, of moonlight and shadow," pointing at another young woman, panic in her violet eyes. "And the little witch," he continues, striding forward. Thorfinn steps in front of Fenrir, and the _Úlfheðnar_ turns an unreadable look back upon him. "She smells like _you_ , brother," he says, curiosity in his tone. He tilts his head back, about to howl. That's the signal. The Vikings are drumming their swords and axes on their shields, and the people on shore have begun to yip, rattling their spears, arrows pointed at the Vikings.

The little witch looks steadily up at Thorfinn. The trust in her eyes nearly undoes him - Thorfinn the Bold, the hero of Eddas, who climbed Yggdrasil to steal a piece of Thor's warhammer, who battled _jötunns_ on Bifrost and trolls beyond the lands under the earth. Yes, Thorfinn the great Viking wizard, sacker of cities and seducer of maidens from the Rus to the Rhine - undone utterly by a slip of a witch with amber eyes and copper hair.

"Do you trust me?" Thorfinn whispers, holding out his hand. She puts her hand in his in reply, meeting his gaze with a steely resolve of her own.

•••

When he wakes, it is to the sound of the rain. He smells ash and fertile earth, and his heart jumps when he realizes just whose pliant body is pressed up against his. Cinnamon lashes flutter against creamy skin, and with his thumb he brushes a lock of her hair back behind her ear. A small smile breaks out across her face, and he traces the line of her cheek, resting his thumb upon the rosy indent in her lower lip, groaning softly as she draws the tip of his thumb into her mouth, nipping it with her sharp teeth. He groans, not wanting reality, not wanting this to end.

That is when the Dark Mark burns, pain searing his left arm. The Dark Lord is calling him. "Of all the fucking times," Thorfinn growls, shaking himself out of the dream.

" _Thorfinn_." His name on her lips, half-sigh, half-moan, nearly undoes him.

•••

If there's one thing the man formerly known as Tom hates, it's gross incompetence from his followers, because that means he isn't in control. While human error accounts for some mistakes, sheer stupidity counts for others - and those _cost_ more, whether in secrets or in the ever-shifting allegiance of the mob.

Gossip is the thief of reputation, after all. If there's anything Tom Marvolo Riddle deplores more than idiocy, it's appearing ridiculous - as opposed to feared.

"Are you ready to tell your Lord the truth?" He hisses in Parseltongue, maintaining the _Crucio_ curse on the body of the hapless Gregory Goyle, who writhes on the parquet floor. "Or will you continue to give me your paltry excuses?"

"Let me have him, Lord," Bellatrix is at his elbow in an instant, dark eyes glowing with fervor. "He'll never speak a falsehood again when I'm through with him."

"My darling Bella." Sighing patiently, her master turns to her. Ever since he threw over his old, snake-faced body for this new one (to the victor the spoils, after all), she's been hanging onto him tighter than Devil's Snare. It is quite the lithe figure he now cuts, handsome too, the body of a young wizard in his prime. He can't help but smile at the delicious irony. If the boy had lived... but he died, and Voldemort took repossession of his only living horcrux. "Dismember him, decapitate him, do whatever dark things you like with him. But I beg you, first extract a confession out of this miserable excuse for a follower."

Bellatrix moistens her lips slowly and deliberately, her tongue slowly tracing her plump lower lip, and he feels his young body respond the way it's built to, almost instantaneously. The stiff erection takes hold of his consciousness, his skin crawling with the twin sensations of excruciating pleasure and pain. "Yes... _Master_." Her voice drops to a throaty whisper as she kneels before him on the floor, kissing his knuckles fervently. He bites back a groan, for she always did love the exquisite art of torture... perhaps too well.

He clasps her shoulders and pulls her to rise, and a most wicked smile flits across her face as she feels every straining inch of him beneath his robes. "Do your worst."

The scream that comes from Goyle is high and thin, almost feminine. He scrambles to get away, slipping and falling in his own blood, his pleading sobs incoherent. Bella laughs, thrusting her wand forward in gleeful excitement as she performs curse after curse on the miscreant before her.

When Goyle is hanging in the air, broken, blood dripping down his chin from where he's bitten his lip through, Voldemort touches Bella lightly on the shoulder. "Enough, my sweet. He will talk." Legilimancy has its perks, to an extent.

"They're dead, Sir- Master. Both of them - Alecto and Amycus."

"Dead?" Voldemort dissolves the Levitation charm and watches in grim satisfaction as the youth crashes back to earth. "Of course they are dead, you addlepated fool! Why wasn't I fucking informed? And where is -"

"What's all this bloody commotion?!" Lucius Malfoy strides into the hall, robes billowing around him and wand at the ready, then stops short when he sees the figures before him. His face flickers with a modicum of unease, and then his features become a pale mask again, smooth and blank as marble. He bows to his master, and inclines his head to his sister-in-law. "My Lord. I did not realize you had come."

"We were in the area, Lucius," Bella says with a giggle, tossing her hair. She sidles up to her sister's husband, gliding the tip of her wand in and out of her pursed lips with obscene delight. Were it not for Lucius' obvious unease, Voldemort might be jealous, but instead it fills him with a certain satisfaction. He has chosen his consort well.

Bella's voice is a sultry purr when at last she deigns to speak again, sliding her wand down between the white mounds of her breasts, fully aware of the effect she's having. She plucks at Lucius' sleeve, her pupils dilated. "You wouldn't make me leave now, would you, Lucius? Not when I am so...close."

Lucius swallows, nocking a finger under his collar, and Voldemort feels a growing smirk spread across his own features. "Of course not. But - permit my impertinence, Lord - surely Malfoy Manor is out of the way?"

"You of all people, Lucius, know how Malfoy Manor holds a special place in my... heart," Voldemort says. He enjoys watching Lucius squirm, especially since he's taken over the Potter boy's body. It must be hard to toady towards the image of the Boy Who Lived, whom the man has despised for so long, even though - _especially_ though - his Lord now possesses it. "And after your betrayal of me at the last hour, you should be grateful - prostrating yourself to kiss the hem of my robe will only get you so far. No, Lucius, Malfoy Manor will be open to me for as long as I wish it to be - whether I am torturing incompetents, fucking Bella, or supplanting you as its master." He sends a Body Bind at Goyle, who has been trying to slither away. The boy is ugly crying, and a _Silencio_ makes short work of it. "Now tell me, Lucius, before I send you to fetch your own incompetent heir - what do you know of the Carrows?"

There is a loud _pop_! as Thorfinn Rowle Apparates into the room, and they all turn to look at him.

"You look like hell, Rowle," Malfoy drawls. "What in Salazar's name happened to _you_?"

Voldemort has been wondering the same thing. Usually when the Dark Mark is activated, whichever minion has been called comes scurrying, but there's something about Thorfinn Rowle tonight, something different, though he can't put his finger on what exactly. Occulomency draws a blank - either the bastard has learned to mask his thoughts from his lord, or there's nothing worth hearing between those ears. Voldemort favors the latter prospect. "Yes, Rowle," he says with a particularly smooth tone that strikes fear into the hearts of lesser men, "where _have_ you been?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Rowle says, wiping a hand across his face and looking stunned to see the soot smeared across it. "Pettifer accompanied me to Northern Ireland to take over for Avery in regards to capturing an Undesirable with the Resistance Army."

" _Resistance_ Army?" Voldemort hisses. "Do you mean the _traitors_?" Those little bastards have been a thorn in his side ever since their escape, and capture thus far has proven futile - meanwhile, their continued existence in Britain has given hope for his ultimate defeat.

The sooner they are all captured and summarily executed, the better. Things cannot be allowed to continue as they are. This world won't stand long, and Voldemort refuses to let everything he's worked for to collapse on account of a handful of exiles. He narrows his eyes at Rowle, waiting for an explanation.

"That miserable sod Pettifer isn't back yet, I take it," Rowle says. "Well, to make a fucking long story short, when Muggles fight between themselves, the results aren't pretty." He shudders, as though shaking off a particularly nasty dream. "There was a bomb in the pub where we went to apprehend the Undesirables." He holds up a hand to forestall their questions. "Let me finish. The Undesirables were a half-blood bloke called Finnigan, and a blood traitor girl, who have been fighting as Muggle mercenaries according to the half-blood's cousin, who pleaded clemency..."

"Clemency?" Voldemort laughs, mockingly. "He will be given the Dementor's Kiss!" His eyes narrow, menacingly. "Well, Rowle? Where are they?"

"That's the thing about Muggle weapons of war, Lord Voldemort." Thorfinn rubs the back of his neck. "The Dementors will have to save their kisses for their sweethearts, for there's nothing left of the traitors to give kisses _to_."

"What does that mean?" Bella cries shrilly. "Have the Muggle beasts learned how to make their enemies turn invisible?"

"That's one way of putting it," Rowle says. He lights a cigarette, flicking it nonchalantly into the puddle of Goyle's blood, which has begun to spread across the floor. "Have you ever seen what a bomb can do to a human body, Bellatrix?" He laughs, humorless.

He's hiding something, Voldemort is certain of it. Frustratingly, however, he has bigger concerns to worry about. Rowle will come clean later, the safety of his eldest sister's mudblood brats depends on it. With that satisfying thought, the Dark Lord changes the subject.

"Well, Mr Rowle, as I was quizzing Lucius here, what do either of you know of the Carrows?"

Lucius swallows, obviously weighing his options. "They were in charge of torturing a pureblood prisoner of war for information regarding the whereabouts of the remaining Dumbledore's Army members, my Lord."

"Which took those damned fools over a twelvemonth, if I'm not mistaken."

"They were under the impression that you gave him to them to _play_ with, not to extract information," Thorfinn says. He clears his throat. "Alecto and Amycus Carrow might just be two of the most twisted fuckers I can think of when it comes down to brass tacks, my Lord."

"Yes, if you had given the boy to one of your less sadistic followers..." Lucius lets his voice trail off meaningfully.

"How could I trust _you_ , Lucius? You were one of my most loyal subjects - until you betrayed me. I let you live, and your pathetic heir too - when I could have ended your line." Voldemort smiles, condescendingly. "And how _is_ dear Narcissa? I hope the healers at St Mungo's have been treating her well."

Pain flares in Lucius' expression, but his tone is flat. "Very well at my last visit, Lord. She will never regain her sanity, but she will have a 'quality of life' she might not enjoy at a lesser institution." He swallows, his knuckles white around his wand. Thorfinn, meanwhile, looks as though he's going to be sick - as well he should. Those half-blood brats will share Narcissa's fate if he dares to cross his master.

"Very good," Voldemort says. He traces a finger down Bella's cheek. "Why so glum, my little carrion crow? Are you sad for your sister? Don't be. She got what she deserved, the conniving whore."

"Oh, no," Bella sighs, leaning into his hand. "I'm only sad that I didn't get the chance to curse her myself. Perhaps I should pay her a visit...?"

" _No_!" The force of Lucius' shout echoes in the cavernous room. For such a small spot, it has excellent acoustics. They all turn to look at him. He is breathing heavily, gripping his wand as though about to curse Bella instead. "You'll stay away from her, you deranged bitch!"

"No need to get so high and mighty about it, Lucius. We all know what you got up to during the War with that halfblood you kept in your cellars. By all accounts you were _insatiable_." Voldemort smiles, inscrutable. "But please, go on and curse _Bella_ , if it makes you feel better."

"Father? By Merlin's saggy ballsack, we can hear you all the way out in the atrium, so - Oh. Hello, Auntie Bellatrix. My Lord. ... And Lord Rowle. There are much more pleasant places in the Manor for social gatherings, you know." Draco's eyes widen when he sees Goyle on the floor, but he says nothing. "Father, why don't you take Tori for a walk around the grounds? She's been asking to see Mother's night garden. I told her that you'd be able to explain everything better, seeing as it was a garden you planted together."

Lucius' fury seems to drain from him all at once, and he sags into his son's hand on his shoulder, a broken man. It gives Voldemort a deep, vicarious pleasure, knowing that Lucius will be tortured for the rest of his life for his part in letting Potter's little friends slip away. The fact that he and his son were forced to watch in silence as Narcissa Black Malfoy was cursed to madness? Icing on the cake.

Draco turns to Voldemort, Rowle and Bella after his father has gone, peering at them inquisitively. "Is this about the matter of the Carrows, my lord?"

"See?" Voldemort crows. "He gets it! Yes, Draco. Your worthless crony here, Mr Goyle, has been trying to explain to me why I was not informed straightaway that their little pet had escaped."

"He did more than escape, my Lord," Draco says blandly. "They were just found. It has been over two months since they died, according to St Mungo's. From what I heard, it was a most revolting scene. And another thing, if I may... A body belonging to one of the Dumbledore's Resistance Army members has been found as well." Draco rocks back and forth on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back. "Why Muggleborns insist on hiding in plain sight... He was one of _their_ aristocrats. A Mr Finch-Fletchley, Lord of someplace or the other."

"What does this have to do with the Carrows?" Voldemort sneers. The situation has gotten away from him, and he doesn't like it.

"Because of the way he died, Sir. While Alecto was found drowned in the bathtub – her ghost was most descriptive of what she'll do to the unlucky bugger when we find him – Amycus was stabbed, hung, and then dismembered. Justin Finch-Fletchley was also hung, his blood drained into a basin. The Muggle press were about to have a field day over it, until our people stepped in. But there's... Well, I'll show you."

Draco extracts a long silvery memory from his temple. "The Pensieve is in Father's study, if you'll allow me."

"Mmm. Soon." Bella is licking the shell of Voldemort's ear, rubbing on him. All this talk of killing has her wetter than a whistle, if he knows Bellatrix, and he does - intimately. "We'll meet you there. We have... business to take care of still."

"Yes, my lord." Draco is all polite obeisance. "Rowle and I will escort Greg to the dungeons on our way."

•••

Once Draco, Thorfinn and Goyle have turned the corner, the sounds of Bellatrix's unholy moans of pleasure and the slapping noise of flesh on flesh reaches them. Draco and Goyle share a look of revulsion. Couldn't the Dark Lord have shut the door?

•••

Ginny wakes with a mouth full of the taste of sulfur and eyes full of grit. Her whole body aches, and Granny's dress smells like fire and blood.

"Gods..." she turns her head, and dry retches onto the ground. There is no Peasy to help her now. She hopes beyond hope that the little elf made it out of that nightmare alive. The only thing she can think of is the last time she saw Thorfinn Rowle, tall and handsome as hell, looking every inch the Viking wizard. At the Battle of Hogwarts, how he'd saved her life in a dark corridor where evil flourished, haunting her still.

 _Star..._

Finnigan's body, exploding in a red mist, the screams of people trying to make it to the exits, the roar of the fire, and through it all, Ginny's scream of _Apparate!_ in a panicked howl, clinging to Thorfinn like a lifeline. And then, in a dream, hair whipping up a storm across a wine dark sea as a Viking warrior with eyes like ice and a voice to melt her heart takes her hand, and says, _Do you trust me?_

Weakly, Ginny has been crawling through the dark tunnel of the cavern towards daylight, and now she races down the path in the rising dawn, skidding to a stop just in front of Granny Mab's door. The place is crawling with Muggle police.

"Fuck my life," Ginny whispers, trying to make it away without being seen.

"Hey! Who's there?" Someone roars, and Ginny, recognizing the voice of Jackaroo's bomber friend, cuts and runs.

 **XxX**

 **A/N:**

The idea of Voldemort possessing Harry's body comes from a meme on tumblr. I'm not exactly sure where the idea for Narcissa being tortured came from, I can't claim it can from me organically, so if you think I stole it, well, it absolutely was not intentional.

 _Aegishjalmur, Vegvisir, Valnott –_ runes of protection.

The _Aegishjalmur_ is the "helm of awe".

The _Vegvisir_ is the runic compass.

The _Valknott_ is the triple triangle, or "death knot", and followers of Odin wore it. They also tended to die violently.

 _Stǫðva_ means "stop" or "halt" in Old Norse.

Edited with the concrit/help of the wonderful StopTalkingAtMe.


	6. Alliance

**Chapter Five | Alliance**

 _If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf –_ Nikita Khrushchev

Cho throws her arms around Ginny at the ferry dock. "Look at ya, Gin!" She coos in her thick Scottish brogue. Next to Cho's polished look, Ginny feels very grimy. "Look at 'er, Ern!"

Ernie MacMillan is a big, broad shouldered man now, with curly dark blond hair and a five o'clock shadow that somehow makes him look rugged. He's wearing a kilt and a band t-shirt, with high top red chucks to match. "Aye, a verra Muggle-lookin' lass ye are, Ginny." Ernie nods to Cho. "We've been verra worrit about ye an' Seamus. Where is the mon?" He looks towards the ferry hopefully, as though Seamus might explode out any minute.

"I... I don't know." Ginny finds she is suddenly very close to tears. "I don't _know_ , Ernie. He hasn't contacted you?"

Ernie and Cho share a look. Cho loops her arm through the other girl's. "Come on then, ye must be famished."

Ginny is drooping, she's been trying to stay awake since Belfast to keep her edge and stay one step ahead of the aurors. But now that she is safe, she finds that all her exhaustion has crept up on her at once, and she closes her eyes for a sweet, single moment.

"Ginny!" Cho is shaking her. She's fallen in the street and Muggles are looking on, concerned.

"Excuse me," A man in wellies and a jumper worn through at the elbows rushes up. He kneels on the pavement, shining a tiny torch in Ginny's eyes. "Aye, there's nae concussion."

"She's fine, just verra tired," Cho says. "Our friend didnae sleep on the ferry." Under her light tone is a thread of fear.

"If she starts complainin' of dizziness, don't be afeart to gie me a call, day or nicht." He hands Cho a hastily scribbled slip of paper. "Andrew MacTavish. I'm a medical student at the Royal College in Edinburgh." His eyes are very, very blue. "Really, call anytime a' all."

Cho blushes deeply, but Ginny can see that she is pleased. "All right," she says with a smile in her voice.

"We'll take it frae here," Ernie cuts in, scooping Ginny up in his arms. "Ye daft lass, don't go scarit us like that again." In a faint whisper, his lips close to her ear, he says, "Don't look, but there are 'interested parties' behind us."

Cho has noticed too, she is tense as a bowstring, her hand fiddling with something in her purse that Ginny would bet is her wand. Andrew is making a joke and Cho smiles, but she's not laughing.

"Ahm not as funny as I think Ah am, Ah guess," Andrew says with a wry chuckle. "It was verra nice tae meet ye." He seems to be waiting for something.

Cho surprises him with a sudden hug. "Thank you again."

With a wave of her fingers, she starts walking away, Ernie and Ginny following apace. Once they turn the corner, Ernie sets Ginny down. "Eechie ochie?" He asks Cho. She nods. "Come on then, lass," he says to Ginny.

With a soft _pop_! they Apparate away.

In the ringing silence left by their absence, two wizards come racing around the corner and then stop dead.

"Those fuckers!" Zacharias Smith kicks a trash skip furiously. "One more strike an' it's to Azkaban for me."

The other wizard turns to Smith, the beginnings of a twisted grin lighting the sharp planes of his face. He fingers a spelled coin in his pocket, and smiles benignly instead, though his eyes still gleam nastily. "What a terrible pity that would be."

•••

"Yer awake," Ernie states the obvious, and hands Ginny a glassful of whiskey. He's making food, and the kitchen smells enticingly of fresh bread and rabbit stew. "Go on, then, an' ask yer questions. I can see 'em in yer eyes."

She lets out the breath she didn't know she was holding. "Fine. Where are we?"

"Eechie Ochie." Cho slaps a stack of parchment down on the counter, hard. "It's on a property on the coast o' Orkney, belongin' tae that feckin' Sassenach, Laird Justin Finch-Fletchley. His English Muggle family only uses the acreage once a year, fer the huntin' season. We're just the caretakers."

"Are you fucking serious?" Ginny demands.

"Not everyone's cut out to go 'round the world fightin' in Muggle wars, Ginny Weasley," Cho hisses. She passes a hand over her eyes, taking a deep breath, then rests her palms lightly on the countertop. "I'm sorry. I'm just worried fer Susan. We havnae seen her in a few days."

Ginny looks over at Ernie, whose shoulders are tense. She remembers Susan and Ernie coming out of that forest when all the birds were singing, Susan as golden and glowing as the queen of the May. It shouldn't surprise her that they have become lovers, wars give strange bedfellows, after all.

Just look at her and Seamus. Two years ago, she wouldn't have looked twice at him, too enamored of Harry, and now... Now, she wonders if she really knows how to love anyone at all.

"I'm sure she isn't gone for good." She regrets the words as soon as they come out of her mouth, for the room swirls with strange undercurrents and the tension is thick as treacle. "Um... I need a smoke. Be back in a few."

Cho joins her beside the fire pit some five minutes later. "I'm fair sorry, Ginny. We've been beside ourselves. Susan an' Ernie had a fallin' out right before she left."

"Maybe she went to stay with her family. Doesn't she have Muggle cousins in Liverpool?"

"They were all murdered," Cho says, hugging herself. "Down to the verra last wee bairn. Thon Muggle police said it was gangs, but I've never heard of a Muggle gang who killed folk an' didn't leave a mark. Susan hasnae been all right since it happened, neither. Usually she an' Ern have a big fight, an' she storms off fer a few hours, then comes back drunk as hell. She's nae peach tae live with, Ginny, believe you me." Cho's lips thin a little, and Ginny is glad she doesn't have to share Seamus with another witch. "...Ah was right lucky, ma parents were visitin' ma brother in the States. It didn't take much tae persuade them tae stay infinitely."

"An' Ernie's family?" She is almost afraid to ask.

"Ah pulled a Granger an' Obliviated 'em." Ernie walks up to the girls, handing them both a goblet full of a steaming golden alcohol. "Cheers, witches. To erasin' our fuckin' names frae the book o' the 'Sacred Twenty-Eight'... To bein' kings an' queens o' our lonely exile..."

Cho raises her goblet. Her eyes gleam, reflecting the sunset. "Tae flippin' the bird any way we can tae our fuckin' so-called 'laird an' master'."

"To the ones we've lost, who died fighting the good fight. To Dean and Katie, who held off three Death Eaters single-handedly, so we could steal the Quidditch teams' brooms. And to Harry..." Neville has emerged from the house, reeking of Floo powder, and he chokes down whatever he's been about to say. He raises his glass.

"To Harry, who died for all of us," says Padma Patil, who walks up with Anthony Goldstein from the garden gate, the wind in their hair. "And to Dumbledore's Army - what's left of us, anyway."

"To us!" They raise their glasses, clink, and down the fiery brew. Ginny thinks she holds her liquor remarkably well for a witch of barely eighteen. The other girls are gagging and coughing, while all the boys hold out their goblets for more. They'll drink and drink, until they can't see straight, and then they'll drink some more. It's been fifteen months since they've all been in one place together, she realizes... since the massacre that they all survived, in one form or another.

Cho and Ernie, sitting so close to one another on the bench that their thighs touch, breathing heavily through the nose and pretending not to notice one another. Anthony and Padma, wandering around the garden and pointing at things, then laughing. Padma is dressed in a turquoise silk sari, and Anthony like he works in an office somewhere, he's looking very smart in a suit.

Neville stands apart, staring at the sun as it sinks in a scarlet and gold haze beneath the gray ocean, the stillness broken only by the scream of a hawk from a long way off. Ginny steps closer, careful not to startle him. Cho was right, in a way - Ginny has seen what a war can do to a person, and the way back is never smooth or even kind.

Ginny doesn't know if she will ever find her way back, or if the only way is forward.

"This world won't stand," Neville says bitterly, draining his goblet of every last drop. "It won't go on like this. It _can't_."

"Harry wouldn't have wanted -"

Neville turns on her, barely restrained anger in his voice. "And you'd know? You, Miss 'I'm going to run off to Belfast and Kosovo and leave the rest of you to pick up the pieces'?" He runs a hand through his hair, and she is shocked to see how haggard he looks. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just... It was a hell of a time for you and Finnigan to up and disappear."

"You're not the only one who lost someone you loved." Ginny moves closer, until they are shoulder to shoulder. She doesn't want to say anything, to break the moment. Instead, she reaches out and takes his hand, squeezing it firmly.

Neville makes a choking sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and he drops his goblet, pulling her into a tight embrace. "I'm sorry about your family," he says into her hair. "It fucking hurts. So much. Every fucking day. We were supposed to _win_ , Ginny. What in the bloody hell _happened_?"

Belatedly, she remembers - his parents were killed too, and though they never found his grandmother's body, somehow it is crueler, for until Neville knows of her death, he will be tormented by hope. "I don't know," she says softly, leaning into his comforting warmth. "I tried... I tried..." She thinks of Fred, lying so still and quiet on the ground. Of Charlie, who she never told goodbye. Of Harry, who cast her away to keep her safe, but in the end, never kept her safe at all. And of Seamus... She pinches the bridge of her nose. Her thoughts are swirling.

"...Can I get you another drink, Red?"

Ginny recoils.

"What?" Neville picks his goblet up off the grass. "Did I say something - what's wrong?"

"Ginny, Nev. Sorry tae break this up, but everyone is in the house. Ye know the sayin', but our hearth is yer hearth. There's stew on the hob an' enough firewhiskey fer an army." Ernie winks. "We're waitin' on one special guest, a lad o' pairts."

"Shall we, Red?" Neville puts his hand on Ginny's shoulder. She shrinks back from his touch, and he stiffens, just. "What has happened to you, brave Weasley girl?" Neville asks, brushing his thumb across her cheeks.

"It's better that you don't know," Ginny says, and turning from him, follows Ernie into the house.

•••

Ginny sits near the fire, watching her former friends talk and laugh, catching up on each other's lives. For every Dumbledore's Army member who is in the room, there are faces missing, not only the slain, but the ones who ran so far she's not certain if they'll ever return. Lavender Brown, mauled by Fenrir Greyback, vanished into the wilds of Canada. Luna Lovegood, last seen with Lee Jordan on the Quidditch pitch, their fates forever unknown. Hermione, the only person who can tell her of Ron's death, hiding her face in Paris.

Yes, she _should_ hide. If Ginny ever sees her former best friend again, she's isn't sure she won't tear her from limb to limb. Consorting with known Death Eaters. Proclaiming her innocence. Hermione is lucky she stayed in Paris tonight.

"Is this seat taken?"

Ginny looks up in surprise. Dennis Creevey takes her silence for an answer, and sits down casually next to her, sinking into the old sofa, mug of firewhiskey levitating precariously at his elbow. He smiles, holding out his hand.

"Do you remember me?" He is the kind of boy Ginny might have dated in her younger years - messy brown hair, brown eyes and long, lanky limbs.

Ginny nods, not trusting herself to speak. She _does_ remember. Dennis was a Gryffindor. His brother, Colin, followed Harry everywhere, even into the jaws of death itself.

Dennis should have been in his fifth year at Hogwarts by now, but since he is a Muggleborn, he will never again have that chance.

"I stole a broomstick to get here from my neighbor. He's gonna be bloody confused in the morning." Dennis grins, the cheeky brat, and then takes a huge gulp of firewhiskey, his eyes bulging.

He coughs, spluttering, and Ernie thumps him between the shoulder blades, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially, "If ye want tae impress a lass, Creevey, learn tae hold yer liquor."

Dennis blushes, hard, and without a look back at Ginny, bolts towards the garden.

"Can't blame a lad fer tryin'." Ernie says, jumping over the back of the sofa to sit next to Ginny. He gives her a frankly appreciative look. "Finnigan's a lucky bastard."

"Shut up," she says, hitting him with a decorative pillow and laughing despite herself. "You're a fucking flirt, Ernie MacMillan."

"Mmm, ye hae a dirty mouth, Ginny Weasley." Ernie says, leaning in. "Say ma name like that again."

Cho crosses the room in a studied, casual manner, but she isn't fooling anyone really. She dances her fingertips across Ernie's shoulders, shooting Ginny a warning look. "Quit blatherin' on, ye fool," Cho says. "Ye'll put our Ginny right back tae sleep. Come help me in the kitchen. I don't want our _important_ _guest_ tae think we've become complete Muggle savages."

Ernie opens his mouth to protest, but Cho clamps her hand on his wrist and tugs him up. He leans down, and before Cho can stop him, brushes his lips across Ginny's ear.

"If yer lonely, ma room's the first one at th' top o' the stairs. It'll be open tae _you_ all night." With a wink over his shoulder, he follows Cho out of the room.

When they are gone, everyone looks at each other and smirks, then conversation resumes.

Ginny finds her hands are cold, and she wraps herself in Seamus' jacket again. It smells of peat and mist, it smells like _him_. Will he talk to Alec first, will he go to Granny Mab's? She hopes beyond hope that he will come through the door, surprising everyone. And then her mind loops around, thinking of Thorfinn, of how they've come full circle. He saved her life, and she saved his. Does this mean that they will never see one another again, that their time has ended? _This world can't go on_. Neville's words echo in her ears.

 _It can't._

•••

Thorfinn hates the Manor, and especially without Narcissa there. Before, it was stuffy, sterile, and entirely too 'old money', so a person was afraid to put his boots up on the table lest he scuff up some precious family artifact. Now, it is the same, only different - for it has lost its heart.

He finds Lucius in the greenhouse, sitting next to a silphium, a plant from ancient times that the Muggles drove nearly to extinction. They are rare things, silphiums, though it should not surprise him that the Malfoys lay claim to one - they are collectors of many dark artifacts, and the heart of the silphium may be one of the darkest. The Muggles in times of old used it for love and even currency, never guessing the heart of its mystery lay within the very deepest part of its germination.

For they say it is the true key to immortality - beyond even Flamel's stone - for it bestows youthful vitality as well, and cures any malady at the height of its flowering. It cannot be forced to flower, especially magically, for once interfered with, it will wither, sending out a spore that upon entering the bloodstream, destroys the magical core from within. And there is no cure.

Yet, with its heady, intensely sensual scent, the little plant is quite the lure.

It blooms only once a century, and then dies. It is still a tight bud, furled in on itself, like a blushing virgin before the bedding ceremony. Outside the glass, Astoria Greengrass is sitting beside the black marble fountain, braiding roses and forget-me-nots into her long pale hair.

"Narcissa planted this on our first meeting, she told me. I didn't know I would marry her then." Lucius stares at the flower. "Now, here we are, not even a quarter century wed, and she is gone." He turns his gaze to Thorfinn, and his eyes are those of a dead man. "Not deceased, for then I could grieve. No, she lives, yet she is gone - and that is crueler than death could ever be. A broken heart may kill a man, but fragile hope will ensure he suffers for many a long century to come."

Lucius turns back to his contemplation of the flower, and there are tears glistening on his pale cheeks. "Sometimes I wonder if she will wake when the petals open. Will I be alive then? Is this my punishment for turning my back on Lord Voldemort?" He does not say it, but he does not have to - Thorfinn was there. His son made his choice, and Lucius took the blame.

Would any father do less for his own child?

Well... Maybe Thorfinn's.

Thorfinn remembers, without wanting to, how stiff and formal his father became after the death of his mother. How everything in their home became absolutely correct, right down to the last tradition. How the house had seemed so empty, once her light had gone from it - his older sisters, all three married so soon, and he, the only son, could not bear to be in the echoing house with only his father and the house elves for company. How he'd thought he'd found a family in his fellow Death Eaters, only to realize at the end that they weren't really a like a family at all, that all the men he so casually called 'brother' felt just as empty as he. That the only time he really _had_ felt a part of a family was with...

"Fuck, bigger, shite," Thorfinn says, leaning back in his chair. _Star_. The sound of the explosion, her scream of _Apparate_ , the heft of a battle axe in his hand. _Aegishjalmur, Vegvisir, Valnott._ Where did that come from?

"Yes, I quite agree." Lucius rises, his lips thinning in pain, and Astoria rushes into the greenhouse, roses and vines forgotten as she links her elbow through his. "Thank you, Miss Greengrass, but I'm not such an old man as all that."

Astoria flutters her pale lashes, her cheeks flushing a comely pink. She has a sprinkling of freckles on her collarbone that Thorfinn finds his eyes drawn to, and he notices Lucius has his eyes on them too, the randy old goat. "Of course, Lord Malfoy. How many times must I ask you to call me Astoria?"

"Only as many times as I must insist you call me Lucius," Lucius drawls, arching an amused brow at Thorfinn, as if to say, _Can you believe this?_

Astoria is cream and gold and coral, she is everything delicate and high-born that Thorfinn should want.

As another wizard's betrothed, she is forbidden.

Thorfinn has never developed the fear of danger that lesser men have. If he had, he wouldn't be where he is today. "Astoria, is it?" He asks, and the girl turns to him, moistening the ' **O** ' of her lips with languorous darts of her little pink tongue. No wonder she's mesmerized Lucius. She's delectable.

Lucius's gray eyes are hard as flint when he looks at Thorfinn. He steps forward, effectively blocking his rival. "Astoria." He rolls the girl's name around in his mouth, and it spills from his lips in a deep-throated growl. The girl has begun to breathe quicker, a little rabbit trapped in the gaze of the fox. Her lashes flutter against her porcelain cheek, and she looks up at her soon-to-be father-in-law with a smoldering gaze.

Maybe Lucius is mourning Narcissa in his heart, but he certainly isn't mourning her in his bed.

Draco Malfoy is truly a fucking imbecile for trusting his father and his fiancée alone together. Maybe the boy doesn't care who fathers his heir, as long as it's sired by a Malfoy. Maybe Draco prefers the company of men. All Thorfinn knows is that if Astoria were his, he wouldn't let the witch out of his sight.

If she were Thorfinn's, he'd bend her over the table and fuck her until she couldn't walk straight.

"Lucius." Thorfinn clears his throat. He's enjoying this a little _too_ much. "The Dark Lord's business waits for no wizard."

Lucius ignores him to lift Astoria's hand, pressing his lips to her knuckles. A breathy gasp escapes from her lips, and she curtsies prettily. "You look exhausted, my dear. Perhaps you should lie down before dinner."

"My lords," she says, turning to curtsey to Thorfinn in turn. He can see down her neckline nearly all the way to her knickers. "I think I _will_ have a lie-down before dinner." She twirls a finger in her hair. "All alone, in that big, big, bed." She sashays from the room, pausing at the door of the greenhouse to fix Thorfinn with a small, knowing smile.

"Don't even think about it," Lucius barks at Thorfinn once she has gone. "No matter how much you want to."

Lucius strides out of the greenhouse, into the fresh evening air. "That's the thing about the siliphium," he says with a grimace. "It makes Draco's fiancé want to fuck. Not that I haven't wanted to have her six ways to Sunday, but it's the principle of the thing." He fixes a look at Thorfinn, daring him to disagree. "Are you a man of principle, Rowle?"

"I'm a Pureblood," Thorfinn says dismissively. He is uncomfortably reminded of his late father. _Where is your honor, boy, your fire?_ Odin Rowle's voice sneers from memory.

" _Not_ the same thing." Lucius Malfoy's cane _tap-tap_ s on the marble walkway, shining wet with spray from the fountain. He turns around, fixing Thorfinn with an intense scrutiny. "You say you are a Pureblood - but what does that mean about a wizard's nature? Are you honorable, are you proud, are you honest? Do you uphold your sacred duties?"

"I'm a loyal man." Thorfinn swallows. What a fucking shitshow all this has turned out to be. Who knew that after the war was over, he would be so fucking bored with peace?

"Wizards such as us thrive during turbulent times." Lucius shows his teeth. "We are not men of peace - we are wolves of war."

 _Wolves of war...Úlfhéðnar._

 _"_ Yes... _Úlfhéðnar_."

Thorfinn wonders if he's spoken the word aloud. And where did it come from? _From a dream_... When all the world was laid out before him, and the one thing he wanted most was what he could never have. "I'm a civilized wizard, Lord Malfoy. Not some werewolf savage, like Greyback."

Lucius chuckles. "Yet the beast lurks in every civilized man. Do we let the monster out, to ravage the countryside? No, for we may be monsters, but we protect what is ours, down to the bone." He raises a brow. "Do you not agree?"

Thorfinn thinks of his sisters - of proud Hella, of motherly Idunn, of fierce Skadi. And, unbidden, of _her_. "I'd throw every last man jack of you to the wolves if it meant saving -"

"Your niece and nephew?" Lucius smiles, as though kindness is an emotion he is out of practice with.

Perhaps it is.

 **XxX**

 **A/N: so apparently ffn sucked away my notes at the end of last week's chapter, but I'm boneandfur on tumblr; although it is a multi-fandom blog. Check me out there, or come to Death Eaters Express on FB, which is a group run by Canimal, Freya Ishtar and Kittenshift17 and is all about yummy Death Eaters.**

 **Eechie Ochie means "someplace or the other" in Scottish slang.**


	7. Rune

**Chapter Six (Interlude) | Rune**

The room reeks.

If he didn't know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it had been used as a murder chamber, the bloody handprints on the walls would have clued him in.

 _And oh, what a story they tell!_

He'd surprised Finch-Fletchley waxing his car. After Justin's initial shock wore off, he'd been proud to tell his former compatriot all about how fast it went. It's sad how proud the Hufflepuff fucker was to show off his auto and his motorbike. The poor bastard was definitely overcompensating.

As if after thirteen months of torture and privation he cared about a McLaren F1. Fastest car in the world? Right. That's fine, for Muggles maybe. But he's a wizard, and in the end, that car didn't save Finch-Fletchley's ass like a broomstick would.

He is strangely proud of his work. That's why he's come back, to study it for further reference, to enjoy the heady rush. There is truly nothing like the sensation of stabbing a man to death.

A year ago, he would have been disgusted with the realization that torture arouses him like nothing else, but now it is a sensation he delights in, even craves. No wonder Alecto and Amycus liked practicing their art on him much. After they were done hurting him, they would often take turns "comforting" him. The memory of it brings a rush of giddiness, followed immediately after by a sickening nausea.

Too bad about that Muggle. He really does feel for the dumb fuck. But if Finch-Fletchley had locked the door properly, they wouldn't have been disturbed halfway through. Then again, it served as a reminder to be more careful, next time.

For there _will_ be a next time, and it will be better.

Practice makes perfect, doesn't it? He can feel the Old Powers stirring within him already, emboldened by sacrifice. He has killed five already. Only four to go, and then he will be ready to bring such a reckoning, that all the Wizarding world will kneel before what he has wrought into being.

The air shimmers, and he ducks under his cloak as a tall, broad-shouldered auror Apparates into the room with a sense of purpose.

Just what in the fucking name of Taranis is that piece of shit Rowle doing _here_ , of all places?

He'd have thought that bastard dead, long ago.

•••

The room reeks. If Thorfinn didn't already know it had been used as a murder chamber **,** the bloody handprints on the wall would have clued him in. And what a story they tell...

He turns around in a circle, studying what little evidence is left. He wishes the Dark Lord had not sent him here, but he understands why. He clenches his fists.

"By Merlin's balls, you're one sick fuck," Thorfinn says. He has the uncomfortable crawling sensation of something watching, but when he turns, wand held out before him, nothing is there.

Yet the room _echoes_. The walls tell a story, yes - a story that Thorfinn has already witnessed the ending of, back in the Pensieve of Malfoy Manor. He thinks he might vomit, just as the Malfoy heir did. Instead, he kicks the motorbike, and it falls over with a tremendous crash that's sure to bring every Muggle within a hundred yard radius rushing to the scene.

He isn't in the mood for this shit. Get in and get out, that's Thorfinn's M.O. And yet...

"What in the actual fuck?" He looks at the motorbike again. Lying on top of one of the tires is a gold coin. It must have been hidden under the frame, Thorfinn realizes. He bends down to pick it up, and the sensation of eyes on the back of his neck grows stronger. He whips around, but there is nothing there.

In the silence, there is a scratching. Upon the walls, in a wide, untidy scrawl, a handful of words begins to appear.

 _Thorfinn Rowle... I see you..._

"Show yourself, you coward!"

 _I've been waiting for this for a long, long time... Oh, yes._

Thorfinn Disapparates so fast he doesn't care where he ends up, as long as he's away from that horrid little room.

Fifteen minutes later, standing in a lonely wood that peals with the sound of church bells from some far-off spire and looking up at two corpses that might have once belonged to a witch and a wizard, he regrets that sentiment.

But it's too late.

xXx

a/n: Two chapters this week because this one is short.


	8. Alchemy

**Chapter Seven | Alchemy**

"So... the Dumbledore's Resistance Army. All t'gether again." Ernie takes a sip of his goblet, then sets it down. "Since our lad o' pairts is late, I say we start this meetin' early - before we're all too drunk tae do anythin' but snog an' call our exes o'er the Floo."

"Hear, hear!" Padma toasts, collapsing in giggles on Anthony's shoulder.

"I can't say no to that proposition, MacMillan," Dennis says with a broad wink in Ginny's direction.

"Who wants to snog a Weasel?" Draco Malfoy steps out of the Floo, brushing off his immaculate robes. "Sounds like a dodgy prospect, if you ask me."

 _Click_.

The Muggleborns in the room shrink back, while Ernie and Draco look confused. Dennis looks like his every boyhood wet dream has come true at once. His eyes are alight with worship as he stares at Ginny, aiming the .44 at Malfoy with one hand.

"Fuck!" Cho drops the tray of food she's carrying, causing Ginny to misfire. The sound of the gun reverberates in the tiny room, and Draco lets out a shout that seems to hang forever in the air.

When the ringing clears, he is staring, wide-eyed, at the slug embedded in the wall. One inch to the left, and it would have blown his head away.

"Fuck, Weasel! Is that what killed Avery?" Malfoy ignores the gasps from the others and grabs the gun out of Ginny's hand, turning it this way and that, examining it from every angle. "I've never seen a firefly like this up close before. How do you -"

"Not that way!" Dennis pipes up, grabbing the gun from Draco. "If you point the barrel of a loaded gun towards yourself, you'll end up in St Mungo's if you're lucky. In't you never seen a gun before?"

"No," Draco says with a condescending laugh. "I'm not some common mudblood."

"Let him shoot himself next time, Creevey," Ginny says with a studied, casual air, though her heart is pounding as if she's just dodged a bullet herself. "He'll learn, then. Or maybe not - they say you can't teach a ferret new tricks."

Before Draco can draw his wand and fire off an Unforgivable at Ginny, Ernie claps a hand down on his shoulder.

"Ah, here's our mon o' the hour, our lad o' pairts, Draco Malfoy himsel'!" The belated announcement falls flat.

Coming in from the garden, Neville draws up short to see Ginny holstering her gun. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Our Ginny's a bit trigger happy. I, for one, think it's brilliant." Dennis says with a wink at Ginny, patting his lap. "Come over here and speak sweet nothings of AK-47s to me, gorgeous."

Meanwhile, Padma takes a huge gulp from her goblet, fanning herself. "It's too much excitement for me," she says. "I thought I'd just drink until I called my ex on the Floo, like Ernie said. None of this firestick business!"

"Well, we can't all have what we want. I'd like Seamus to be here, but he's been missing for a few days now." Jelly-legged, Ginny sinks back down onto the sofa, accepting a full drink from Neville, who pulls her into a quick, one-armed embrace. He smells like French cigarettes and damp earth.

He nods to Draco, who nods back, stiffly.

"Where's Granger?" Draco demands. "I was under the impression she'd be here." He accepts a shot of liquor from Ernie, downing it in one go and choking, tears streaming down his cheeks. "What in the fucking fuck was that?!"

"That'll put hair on yer chest, laddie!" Ernie thumps Draco between the shoulder blades, nearly knocking him over. "Me own family recipe, aged in alder barrels. Alder burned the brightest in the thick o' the fight, an' it's guaranteed to separate the men frae the mice!"

Neville pours himself a shot, raising a brow. "Bottoms up, Malfoy," he says. Without another word, the two of them glare at one another, then slam their shots.

"Boys!" Padma throws her hands in the air. "It's not time to play 'whose wand is bigger'! We have serious matters to discuss!"

"I don't have to drink to know whose wand is bigger," Anthony says with a shit-eating grin. He nods at Neville and Draco, his voice dropping to a sly whisper. "The fact that Granger's missing says it all!"

"Something to say, Goldstein?" Ernie holds up a shot in front of Anthony's face. "Inverness versus London. What d'ye say?"

"No, no, no!" Cho splutters. The boys all ignore her. "Kern Aleister MacMillan!" She holds up her hand to slap Ernie, but he grabs her wrist with his free hand.

" _Slainte_!" Ernie bellows, and the boys all down their drinks, Dennis included.

"That's enough!" Ginny says, quietly. She drags Ernie and Anthony by their ears to their respective chairs, then muscles her way in between Draco and Neville. "That's. Enough! She isn't here, so sit your arses down! You can drink each other under the table later - we have time for that. For now, can we _please_ act like adults?"

"That's something I never thought I'd hear a Weashley say." Draco slurs, allowing himself to be led to the sofa, pulling Ginny down next to him. "Mmm, you smell good enough to eat," he murmurs, burying his nose in her hair. She pushes him away, but Neville flops down next to her, pinning her between them.

"I don't know if you remember Finnigan or not, Malfoy, but he likes to blow things up. And that's his girl you've got your scaly coils all over," Neville says with a raised brow, chuckling as Draco reels back from Ginny.

"I don't need you act like a white knight, Neville!" Ginny hisses, poking him in the ribs.

"Chivalry? Is that why I'm defending you?" Neville smiles, patting Ginny on the head. "You have a lot to learn yet for someone who wants the rest of us to act like _adults_." He clears his throat. "Hermione's not here, so I'll speak for the both of us." He sips his drink slowly **,** until they all give him their full attention. "She wanted to come, but there have been rumors that the Auror Department is cracking down on Undesirables. We have a mole working for us in the Ministry -"

Draco puts his hand up, snickering, and makes a drunken bow that involves tripping over his feet and landing ungraciously next to the cheese platter.

Neville smirks, waiting for Draco to sit back down, and continues. "Reports are -" he pushes a hand through his hair. "They're bad. It's all bollixed up."

"Fuck yeah they are," Draco says. He's garrulous when he drinks, astoundingly so. "You think your lot is in the dark? Just be happy you don't have to deal with the incompetent fucks our lord has put in charge during this new regime. All of his Death Eaters are in the key roles in the Ministry... and a lot of them suck at it. That's where you bastards step in, you make them seem even worse. But you're only making _Him_ look foolish - and he _hates_ that." Draco drinks again. "I only came to warn you all - our Secret Keeper has been murdered."

There is a cacophony of shouts, and Padma lets out a terrible cry, then buries herself into Anthony's chest, sobbing. Amidst the commotion, a voice breaks in from the back door, one that Ginny remembers from a dream - or a nightmare.

In the doorway stands Fenrir Greyback, flanked by two Snatchers, who are escorting at wand-point a shaking Gabrielle Delacouer and a white faced Michael Corner. "Murder?" Fenrir licks his lips. "I like the sound of that."

Next to her, Draco Disapparates with a loud _pop_. She should have known he wouldn't stay to fight, but she can't say she blames him. Fenrir is looking her up and down with a hunger that chills Ginny down to the marrow. She raises her hand and points a finger at him, knowing in that instant that she cannot afford to fail.

" _Ādrædan_!" Ginny screams in a voice like the grave, from another time, another life. A cold wind gusts in through the open window, all the way from the North Sea, extinguishing the light from every candle and all the warmth from the room. " _Úlfheðnar_!" she cries in a half-remembered language, in a voice that is not quite her own. She sees the wolf in Fenrir's eyes, ready to rip and rend, to tear her to pieces. "I challenge you to a duel!"

"And what are your terms, little witch?" Fenrir is suddenly quite close, looming over her. He smells of the beast and the wild, and his eyes have gone as yellow as the harvest moon. Fenrir Greyback as he is now may not remember the _Úlfheðnar_ , but the _wolf_ remembers, and Ginny has to force herself to remain calm, no matter how terrified she may be. There is no Viking here to be her sword and shield, tattooed with runes, ice blue eyes flashing as he swings his battle-axe.

"If I win, my friends and I shall go free, no longer to be plagued by you or your pack - or the Death Eaters you came here with! You shall become our secret keepers as well, forsworn to your liege lord and master!" It is a bold claim, and she knows it. Fenrir smiles wickedly at her, lifting a lock of her hair and inhaling deeply.

"And if you lose, little red?"

"Then you may take me, and let my friends go!"

"Ginny, _no_!" Neville roars, struggling against his captors. "Unhand her, you beast!"

Fenrir does not spare him a glance, his attention entirely hypnotized by the pulse at Ginny's neck. He places the pad of his fingertips there, for one beat, two – and then his head snaps up, his eyes meeting hers. "It is done."

•••

"Hey, you!"

Thorfinn has just finished emptying the contents of his stomach when he hears the voice, and he turns, trying not to look at the bodies above. A silvery ghost is floating just in front of him, that of a youth in Muggle trousers and a t-shirt that reads "Anarchy in the UK" stretched across a sculpted torso. He looks just as his corpse might have in life, were it not for the stab wound right in the center of his heart.

"Are ya an auror, then?" The boy has an Irish accent, and he studies Thorfinn with sad eyes, thumbs nocked through his belt loops. "It's been so long, I thought no one would find us."

"Who are you?" Thorfinn asks, though he isn't sure he wants to know the answer.

"Seamus Finnigan, at yer service." The ghost bobs his head respectfully, looking around. "Where is she, where's ma love? I don't want her ta see me like..." he looks up at his body, twisting in the air. "Like this."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand." Thorfinn leans heavily against a tree, wiping his mouth. "What happened?"

"I was murdered by ma friend - at least, I thought he was a friend. Once." The ghost sighs. "That's one thing about Gryffindors, ya see. Loyalty is blind."

"No - go back to the beginning. What is this about?" Thorfinn holds up the coin.

Seamus' eyes grow dark and distant, and he shimmers, trying to hold his form together. "Since yer an auror, I can tell ya. I'm one o' Dumbledore's lot, a lieutenant in the Resistance Army. Since Harry died over a year ago though, me an' ma girl have been fightin' with ma friends in Northern Ireland, an' in Kosovo. We got back t'ree months ago."

"With Muggles?" Thorfinn shudders. He knows all about Muggles and their idea of 'fighting' now. "Wait - any relation to Fergus Finnigan?"

"He's ma cousin," Seamus says off-handedly. "Why?"

"Never mind. The coins. Go on."

"Wait a minute. How d'ya know about Fergus?" Seamus' brow furrows in suspicion. He floats closer. "I know ya! Yer not an auror!" His eyes flash. "Ya were at the Battle! Yer Thorfinn Rowle, the Death Eater!"

Thorfinn feels he ought to take a bow, but he doesn't, because the ghost is zooming around, shouting curses in Gaelic that fade and fizzle out to dust. Instead, he waits for it to end, and it does, with the ghost's fists clenched in frustration, shoulders shaking and back turned.

"Where is she?" The ghost demands, rounding on Thorfinn **.** "Where's ma girl? Where have you _bastairds_ ta'en her? That's why ye've found me, innit? The coins told ya!"

Thorfinn holds it up. "I found this on the course of an investigation. A Lord Finch-Fletchley was murdered recently. You know him?"

The ghost reels back in shock **.** "No!" He grabs Thorfinn by the collar. His hands are like ice. "No one is safe!"

Thorfinn is getting frustrated **.** You can't give a ghost Veritaserum, or put one in a Body Bind. And this particular one is already frustrating him. He tries a different tack. "Who's -"

There is a sudden _thump_ in the atmosphere. They both feel it the aftershocks of it, coming in waves, traveling across the barriers of time and space. The air feels sticky, heavy with the faded signatures of ancient magics, as though the land itself is part of the fight.

Where has he felt this before? Why is this affecting him so deeply? Why does he feel so utterly drawn to it, and yet cannot run far or fast enough?

When the ghost raises his head to look at Thorfinn, his eyes are nearly black. "She's in trouble." The ghost suddenly shudders all over, as though he's been stabbed through the heart again. He fixes Thorfinn with a terrible look, the echo of it tingling all the way down to the bone. **"** Don't ya feel it? Look to the west **!** " And he rises above the treetops, pointing.

Thorfinn _does_ feel something. Something that's achingly familiar, a piece of the puzzle that's been missing for years. He Levitates himself to the treetops, and he sees what the ghost is pointing at, far to the coast. "Fuck!" The sky to the west is an inky blue, so dark it is nearly black. He can just make out lightning, and cracks of blue **-** white magic lighting up the sky. "By all the gods, what in Hel's name is that?!"

"Aye, by all the gods!" Seamus says. "Ya felt it too! Ma star is out in Eechie Ochie, an' she's fallin'."

Thorfinn's head whips around so hard to look at the ghost that his neck cracks. "What?" he demands, feeling like all the air has been sucked from the clearing.

"She's in terrible trouble - an' I can't leave here t' help her. I'm bound t' this place by ma death."

"No - did you call her your _star_?"

Seamus smiles, sadly. "Aye, that I did. I'm not much of a romantic, t' be sure, but that was one thing I liked to say. That she was a fallin' star, an' I'd be makin' all ma wishes upon her. Would that I'd have known I'd be pushin' up daisies in a year, I would have wished for different things." He laughs, ruefully **.** "There was this poem she used to say t' me, when we was in Kosovo, an' all the bombs were fallin'. _Go an' catch a fallin' star/Get wi' child a mandrake root/Tell me where t' past years are/Or who cleft t' devil's foot..._ -"

" _Teach me to hear the angels singing/Or to keep off envy's stinging/And tell me/What wind/Serves to advance an honest mind_ ," Thorfinn finishes. Seamus gapes at him.

"Yer him!" he says, poking Thorfinn in the chest.

The sky crackles with thunder **,** and the sky shimmers, a red cloud forming above that place, far to the west.

The ghost points to the ground and shouts " _Accio_ broom!"

The broom shoots into the air, an ancient broom **t** hat looks like a school broom from Thorfinn's salad days. He rubs his hands over the handle, recognizing the notches cut into it, for every Bludger that unseated another Chaser or Keeper.

"Are ya an honest man, Thorfinn Rowle?" The ghost asks, fixing Thorfinn with a steady gaze. His features are contorted with a private pain that Thorfinn recognizes, it is the look of a man who has had everything, and lost it all in one unlucky instant. "Even if ya are a Death Eater?" The ghost doesn't give Thorfinn a chance to answer, just goes on, in that same pained tone, his voice barely heard over the roar of the wind. "She was ma lucky star – an' if yer who I think ya are, then ya must go to her – _now_!"

Thorfinn doesn't need to be told twice.

•••

When Thorfinn lands at the house known as Eechie Ochie, he finds blood everywhere and not a single living soul. The house and grounds are empty, whoever was here left in a terrible hurry.

"Water... Mummy, please... Water..." Curled up under a hedge is a boy, not more than six or seven years Thorfinn's junior. He crouches next to him on the slick grass, putting a hand on his shoulder. He isn't anyone Thorfinn knows, so not a Pureblood or a follower of Lord Voldemort. Thorfinn knows he should leave this traitor to die, that he shouldn't feel any pity for him. And yet, he does feel it - pity, for the boy with a claw mark near his jugular - he won't make it through the night. Thorfinn is frankly shocked he's made it at all.

"Where is she?" he demands, shaking the boy's shoulder. "Where is -"

"Greyback... Sent the Snatchers after the rest of us... the others ran... I tried to fight... they broke my wand... Took her..."

"Took who? What? Why?"

But when the boy's head rolls towards Thorfinn again, his eyes are glassy and lifeless. And he remembers another death, another time.

 _Thorfinn... My sister... The Snatchers are going to rape her... Find her, Thorfinn... Help her..._

"I'm coming, Star," Thorfinn says grimly, kicking his broom into the air.

 _I won't fail you again._

 _xXx_

 _Ādrædan_ means "to fear" in Anglo-Saxon, so basically it's a spell that causes fear in your enemy.

Thank you all for being so wonderful, for your follows and favorites, especially everyone who has taken the time to leave more than a few sentences. I'll name-drop you all next time :) You can follow me on boneandfur at tumblr, it is my multi-fandom blog.


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